Neverisms Read online

  Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.PHYLLIS DILLER, in Phyllis Diller’s Housekeeping Hints (1966)

  Never refer to your wedding night as the original amateur hour.PHYLLIS DILLER, in Phyllis Diller’s Marriage Manual (1969)

  Never do for a child what he can do for himself.RUDOLF DREIKURS, in Children: The Challenge (1964)

  A similar quotation, never formally verified, has long been attributed to the educator Maria Montessori: “Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.”

  Never marry a girl of a mocking spirit.

  Raillery, with a woman, is a mark of hell.ALEXANDRE DUMAS fils, in Man-Woman (1872)

  Dumas apparently preferred submissive women who didn’t stand up to their husbands, even in jest. Raillery is “good-natured teasing.” Synonyms are banter and badinage.

  Never treat a guest like a member of the family—treat him with courtesy.EVAN ESAR

  Never judge a man by the opinion his wife has of him.BOB EDWARDS, Canadian journalist and humorist

  Edwards also offered these two additional thoughts about spouses:

  Never judge a woman by the company she is compelled to entertain.

  Never discuss a man with his wife in the presence of company.

  When a woman’s husband is under discussion,

  she isn’t in a position to say what she really thinks.

  I met my wife by breaking two of my rules:

  never date a girl seriously that you meet at a nightclub and never date a fan.COREY FELDMAN, on Susie Sprague, a former Playboy model;

  the couple met in 2002 and divorced seven years later

  Ne’er take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in.BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, in a 1733 Poor Richard’s Almanack

  Never let your mom brush your hair when she’s mad at your dad.GALLAGHER

  Never argue with your wife about hostility when she’s a certified Freudian.WILLIAM GOLDMAN, on his wife Helen, a child psychiatrist

  Never send your children off to school

  with a convertible sports car or a credit card.LEWIS GRIZZARD, in It Wasn’t Always Easy,

  But I Sure Had Fun (1994)

  In this advice to parents of college-bound youth, Grizzard added: “The sports car will break down, and you will have to pay for it to be repaired. A college-age individual with a credit card will wear the writing off the plastic before Christmas break.”

  Never tell a young person that something cannot be done.JOHN ANDREW HOLMES, in Wisdom in Small Doses (1927)

  Holmes, an American clergyman, continued: “God may have been waiting for centuries for somebody ignorant enough of the impossible to do that thing.”

  Never get married in the morning—

  you never know who you might meet that night.PAUL HORNUNG

  During his playing days with the Green Bay Packers, Hornung did and said many things to cultivate an image of a playboy and a ladies’ man. When he finally married Patricia Roeder in 1967, he violated his own rule and got married in the morning. In trademark fashion, though, he had a wisecracking explanation: “If it didn’t work out, I didn’t want to blow the whole day.”

  Never tell a secret to a bride or a groom;

  wait until they have been married longer.EDGAR WATSON HOWE

  The point, of course, is that newlyweds are so wildly in love that they share everything with each other. In such a state, neither person could be trusted to keep a secret. After a few years of marriage, though, Howe wryly suggests that secrets are safe because the husband and wife have likely stopped talking to each other.

  Never pretend to listen.PHOEBE HUTCHINSON, in Honeymooners Forever (2007)

  Hutchinson, an Australian housewife and mother of two, examined the lives of happily married couples as a way to rejuvenate her own marriage. She summarized her findings in a twelve-step guide to marital happiness. She also advised:

  Never argue in front of children.

  Never have long silent treatments.

  Never let your loved one leave your side without a kiss.

  Never let your anger and resentment build to the point where you

  need to complain about your partner to every person you meet.

  Never bad-mouth your ex-husband to your kids.

  Because if you do, then you ruin the moment

  when they figure it out all by themselves.CORY KAHANEY, a finalist (and ultimate runner-up)

  in the first season of Last Comic Standing in 2003

  Never try to fool children.

  They expect nothing and therefore see everything.HARVEY KEITEL, as Harry Houdini,

  in the 1997 film Fairytale: A True Story

  Never praise a sister to a sister,

  in the hope of your compliments reaching the proper ears,

  and so preparing the way for you later on.RUDYARD KIPLING, in Plain Tales from the Hills (1888)

  This advice to suitors comes from the story “False Dawn.” Kipling went on to explain: “Sisters are women first, and sisters afterwards.” His point is quite sexist, of course, but there are still many people who believe that female siblings are so competitive that one sister would never pass along a positive thing she heard said about another sister.

  Never try to win an argument.

  A common destroyer of marriages is seeing the relationship

  as a competition rather than a cooperation.JOE KITA, in Guy Q: 1,305 Totally Essential Secrets

  You Either Know, or You Don’t (2003)

  Never inform your spouse of your intention to divorce

  by having a lawyer send over papers.MEL KRANTZLER

  The pioneering divorce counselor added, perhaps unnecessarily: “This is a red-hot poker, likely to incur bitter retaliation.” Krantzler authored numerous books on divorce and marriage. His Creative Divorce (1975) became an international bestseller.

  Never allow your child to call you by your first name.

  He hasn’t known you long enough.FRAN LEBOWITZ, in Social Studies (1977)

  Never marry unless you can do so into a family

  that will enable your children to feel proud of both sides of the house.ROBERT E. LEE, in an 1856 letter to a friend

  Never imagine that children who don’t say, or ask, don’t know.ROSAMOND LEHMANN, in her 1967 autobiography

  The Swan in the Evening: Fragments of an Inner Life

  Never put your baby’s length on a birth announcement.

  It’s a baby, not a marlin.CAROL LEIFER, in When You Lie About Your Age,

  the Terrorists Win (2009)

  Never change diapers in mid-stream.DON MARQUIS

  Marquis is usually described as an American humorist, but at various stages of his life he was a novelist, playwright, newspaper columnist, and cartoonist. He is best remembered for “Archy and Mehitabel,” a cartoon strip about a cockroach and a cat. Archy the cockroach, who was a poet in a previous life, left free-verse poems on Marquis’s typewriter by jumping from key to key. The poems were all typed in lowercase because Archy could not operate the shift key.

  Never tell your grandchildren, “When I was your age . . .”DAVID L. MCKENNA, in Retirement Is Not for Sissies (2008)

  McKenna also offered a number of other admonitions for those in their senior years:

  Never go to Costco without a list.

  Never waste the opportunity to take a nap.

  Never challenge a four-year-old to a video game.

  Never expect a grandchild to laugh at your jokes.

  Never marry but for love.WILLIAM PENN, in Fruits of Solitude (1693)

  Never marry for money.ENGLISH PROVERB

  Variations of this proverb show up in many cultures. A Scottish version goes this way: “Never marry for money. Ye’ll borrow it cheaper.”

  Never rely on the glory of the morning or the smile of your mother-in-law.JAPANESE PROVERB

  Never give a child a sword.LATIN PROVERB

  Never quarrel about a baby’s name before the child is born.NORWEGIAN PROVERB

&
nbsp; Never advise anyone to go to war or to marry.SPANISH PROVERB

  Never marry a man who uses the word “feminist” as a term of abuse.ANITA QUIGLEY, in a 2006 column in

  the Daily Telegraph (Melbourne)

  Never part without loving words to think of during your absence.

  It may be that you will not meet again in life.JEAN PAUL RICHTER

  Never marry a girl who feels she is not getting

  the best man in the world when she gets you.KARISA RIVERA, in a 2009 blog entry

  Rivera added: “A girl who enters marriage thinking she could have done better will never be satisfied for wondering what it might have been like if . . .”

  Never tell her about your sex life—or lack of it.

  It’s ugly to see pity in a daughter’s eyes.JOAN RIVERS, on what not to tell a daughter

  Rivers offered this advice about mother-daughter communication in a 1994 issue of Self magazine. Her daughter Melissa also had a few thoughts on what not to tell a mother:

  Never talk about your sex life.

  And no matter how tempted you are,

  never talk about having a fight with your mate.

  Your mother will automatically hate that person forever.

  Never make a pretty woman your wife.ROARING LION (Rafael de Leon),

  from his 1933 song “Ugly Woman”

  If this sentiment sounds familiar, it’s probably because you remember Jimmy Soul’s hit calypso song of 1963, “If You Wanna Be Happy.” The key lyric from the song is:If you wanna be happyFor the rest of your life,Never make a pretty woman your wife,So from my personal point of view,Get an ugly girl to marry you.

  The song was written in 1933 by Rafael de Leon, a calypso artist from Trinidad who performed under the stage name Roaring Lion. First recorded in 1934, it became the first calypso song to be performed in a Hollywood film, Happy Go Lucky, in 1943. Liberace performed the song on his television variety show in the 1950s and, in a big surprise to me, the actor Robert Mitchum recorded it on a calypso album he made in 1957. The song’s greatest success, though, came in 1963, when Jimmy Soul’s version sold more than a million records on its way to the top of the charts.

  Never feel remorse for what you have thought about your wife;

  she has thought much worse things about you.JEAN ROSTAND, originally in Le Mariage (1927)

  The only moral lesson which is suited for a child—

  the most important lesson for every time of life—is this:

  “Never hurt anybody.”JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

  In the history of ethical instruction, it’s hard to find a moral principle that has been better expressed. It comes from Émile (1762), Rousseau’s classic work on the nature of education. Rousseau considered the book to be “the best and most important of all my writings.” Even though it was written 250 years ago, Émile contains many portions that have a contemporary relevance—like this passage on explaining things to children in words they can understand:

  Never show a child what he cannot see.

  Since mankind is almost unknown to him . . .

  bring the man down to the level of the child.

  While you are thinking what will be useful to him when he is older,

  talk to him of what he knows he can use now.

  Or this one on making religious instruction an enjoyable experience:

  When you teach religion to little girls,

  never make it gloomy or tiresome, never make it a task or a duty,

  and therefore never give them anything to learn by heart, not even their prayers.

  While never hurt anybody was the principle by which Rousseau thought people should lead their lives, he formulated an additional rule to guide those entrusted with the instruction of children. He called it the first rule of instruction, and suggested that all teaching practices were subordinate to it: “Never tell a lie.”

  Never advertise what you don’t have for sale.MICHELE SLUNG, quoting her mother in

  Momilies: As My Mother Used to Say (1985)

  When Slung coined the term momilies for a book of homilies her mom had offered over the years, she didn’t tell anyone she was planning a book about them. But as soon as Slung got her first copy from the publisher, she hopped a plane to Pompano Beach, Florida, to hand-deliver a copy to her mom. After the book became a bestseller, Slung followed up with a 1986 sequel, More Momilies. Other neveristic momilies were:

  Never nap after a meal or you’ll get fat.

  Never lower yourself to act like the opposition.

  Never use the plumbing during a thunderstorm.

  Never get married simply because you think it is time to get married.WES SMITH, in Welcome to the Real World (1987)

  Smith added: “Get married because you want to live with someone for the rest of your life, including weekends and holidays.”

  Never give your money away to your children in your lifetime.JOHN D. SPOONER

  As the managing director of investments at Smith Barney in Boston, Spooner explained his reasoning this way: “Always keep control. If you don’t, if you listen to the lawyers and the accountants, you’ll find yourself being led up the steps of the nursing home.”

  Rule Number One: never come right out and say,

  “My grandson Jimmy is a genius. Everybody says so.”

  You’ll be talking into a dead mike.LYLA BLAKE WARD, in How to Succeed

  at Aging Without Really Dying (2010)

  eleven

  Never Mention a No-Hitter While It’s in Progress

  Sports

  Baseball is often described as a game of tradition, and there is no baseball tradition more interesting than its many superstitions. One of the most fascinating emerges whenever a pitcher gets to the fifth or sixth inning without giving up a hit. At this stage of a game, the idea of a no-hitter is on everybody’s mind, but nobody says anything about it—until a hit is given up or the no-hit game is completed. In 1959, New York Times sportswriter Arthur Daly was one of the first people to formally use the expression unwritten rule to describe this practice. He wrote: “One of the oldest baseball superstitions is the unwritten rule that specifies no one is ever to mention a no-hitter that is being manufactured.”

  Daly wasn’t an objective journalist reporting on a social phenomenon. He actually believed the superstition. Or he pretended to, writing:Only a scoundrel would commit so dastardly a deed, because such mention instantly brings the whammy out of hiding. The whammy is a spook with the horns of a jinx that would thereupon direct the flight of the next batted ball and destroy the no-hitter.

  Nobody knows when this superstition began, but even the oldest readers of this piece may recall learning about it for the first time during their sandlot days. And when they first heard it, the rule was likely phrased this way:

  Never mention a no-hitter while it’s in progress.

  Despite its prominence in baseball history, this famous admonition was never formally mentioned in an official baseball publication until 1986. That was when Baseball Digest published an article by two California sportswriters titled, “The Book of Unwritten Baseball Rules.”

  The article, written by sportswriters Peter Schmuck and Randy Youngman of the Orange County Register, was an attempt to chronicle a series of baseball practices that had long dictated the way the game was to be played, but that had never been written down. Even though the word book appeared in the title, the article wasn’t a book at all. Speaking frankly, it wasn’t even an article. It was simply a list of thirty informal rules and prohibitions that, over time, had achieved an almost sacrosanct status. The list included some of the game’s most time-honored practices, like “Don’t steal third with two outs” and “Play for the tie at home, but go for the victory on the road.” And yes, on a formal list for the first time was, “Never mention a no-hitter while it’s in progress.” Seven more were also expressed neveristically, including these:

  Never give up a home run on a 0−2 count.

  Never make the first or th
ird out at third base.

  Never steal when you’re two or more runs down.

  These rules are not based on superstition, like the no-talking ban, but they have traditionally been considered so stupid that they fall into the category of “ways to beat yourself.” They are, in short, the kind of things best described by neverisms. In 2009, language lover and baseball fan Paul Dickson updated and expanded the work of those two California sportswriters when he came out with The Unwritten Rules of Baseball.

  In his book, Dickson wrote that the unwritten rules of baseball “represent a set of time-honored customs, rituals, and good manners that show a respect for the game, one’s teammates, and one’s opponent.” Among the unwritten rules that Dickson added to the list were some lofty principles (“The clubhouse is a sanctuary”) and some important exhortations (“Always show respect for your teammates”). But the greater part of the book was a series of admonitions, many introduced by the word never. Most were addressed strictly to players:

  Never rat out a teammate.

  Never, ever slide into the infielder with your spikes high.

  In a blowout game, never swing as hard as you can at a 3−0 pitch.