I'm not one of those folks who spends time bemoaning the way that my parents raised me.

I suspect that they did the best that they could with what they had. I have no fuss about the way that I was disciplined; getting switched with a peach switch, whupped with a belt, getting grounded (well, I didn't like it so much when they handed me that 220 volt hot line, and then grounded me by having me hold the black wire in my other hand) - heck, I've tried to raise Puckett boys myself. There ain't no way to discipline young Pucketts without using corporal punishment (or even Sergeant punishment - in fact, that actually worked better. But you have to send them off to Basic Training for that).

There's only one thing that I really hate about the way that I was raised - it was that my parents kept Miracle Whip in the refrigerator, and called it "Mayonaise".

I didn't know, until after I had grown up, gotten married, joined the Army, got divorced, got married again, got divorced again, and got married a third time to a Yankee, that "mayonaise" was an entirely different concoction - so much better than Miracle Whip that there was no reason to confuse the two at all. 

I don't think that Mom knows, to this day, that she's not really eating mayo. 

Anyway, now - years after marrying Ethel - she's decided to bring Miracle Whip back into the house. I don't know why. (of course, I don't know why Ethel does anything. In fact, I still don't know why Ethel married me. But then, Ethel doesn't require a "why" for what she does).

Hmmm....let's explore that for a bit. The other day, I was watching an old Northern Exposure episode - the "Jules And Joel" one, it was, from the fourth season - and there was a sequence where Joel was in a jail cell, talking with Sigmund Freud (if you don't understand how that can be happening, then you're not a Northern Exposure fan :)

Anyway, Sigmund had made some suggestions, and Joel was saying things like "Why would I do that?" and Sigmund then asked him -

"Do you do everything from a sense of obligation?"

And upon explanation, Joel agreed that, yes, he does indeed do just that. Of course, he then decided that that must be a bad sort of thing.

I really identified with that thought, once I understood the concept - I, myself, have to have a "why" for doing things, as well as a "why" for NOT doing things that I had decided to do, and then found difficult. I can't just DO things; there has to be a reason to do them, or a reason not to do them.

For a functional Jewish New Yorker MD, maybe that's a bad thing. But, for a bum like me, I think it's a good idea.

My friend Freddy used to say, "People tell me 'just trust your feelings'. Heck - everytime I trust my feelings, I wind up in jail." Obi-Wan Kenobi told Luke Skywalker to "trust your feelings", and that was appropriate, but Luke Skywalker was the Chosen One.

I'm nobody's Jedi. I'm so terrified of my impulses (to do things) or my laziness (to not do things) that I simply can't let actions be taken (or not taken) without examination and justification. If I started doing stuff, or not doing stuff, because I wanted to (or didn't want to) then I'd be in a world of hurt, and so would everybody around me.

So maybe that's why I find it so curious why Ethel would bring Miracle Whip into our happy mayo-home - and maybe that's why I find it so frustrating when I ask her why she does things, and she can't tell me - she has no idea. She doesn't act out of a sense of obligation.

I suspect that Mom didn't act out of a sense of obligation, either. It never occurred to her to ask herself "Why don't I buy mayonaise instead of this sickly-sweet gooey white stuff?"