“Sheila, Danny, why did you let your mommy buy that record?” Mrs Bryant was not happy. My parents were having a holiday party, my mom started playing her “party record.” My brother and I, were home from college on winter break. I sputtered out, “She asked us for a party album.” By then my mom was at the door, mad, “you two did not tell me about the language on the record.” My brother logically replied, “You asked us for a funny album.” Which invoked laughter and the realization that my parents and their friends were not fans of that Richard Pryor …Is it Something I Said. Sacré Bleu! This was what was known as a blue album back in their time and blue denoted lewd and profane.1
This was an instance of intellectual blindspots. There are questions you don’t think to ask based on experience or worldview; you just don’t ask. You ask which way is Starbucks, but not likely to ask is it open if it is 12:00 noon on a weekday. Typically you either don’t want to appear nosey or stupid, so you get very efficient with questions. Is this a good thing?
My Dad would say no. My mom was his diagnostic example of action without all of the relevant information. For instance, once, my mom asked my dad what was wrong and he said he was cold. My mom turned up the heat and my dad shook his head frustrated. “Ruth, I just came in from outside, that’s why I am cold.” My dad described her behavior as an assumptive reaction. She’d mumble under her breadth, “grad school grandstanding.”
This doesn’t mean analyze everything; just be aware of how you use the information you have. Here is the plot twist, the information I have is “ask them.” I know it is something I didn’t think to do. I read an article in my early 20’s about asking family members about their experiences and history whole you can. It’s the ironic circle, when as youths their isn’t often that awareness of how quickly people can disappear from your life. By the time your curiosity kicks in, they can be gone.
This doesn’t mean analyze everything; just be aware of how you use the information you have. Here is the plot twist, the information I have is “ask them.” I know it is something I didn’t think to do. I read an article in my early 20’s that encouraged people my age to ask older family members about their experiences and history while you can. It advised, by the time your curiosity kicks in they are gone. I am happy I had an opportunity to talk to my grandmother, born in the 1890s. Ask! Think about the things you know, or at least think you know, and what’s missing? What do you want to know more of. This week, consider rather than the thought, your family didn’t tell you, did you ask them?
1 Parental Guidance and Explicit Language Stickers didn’t start until 1987 and 1990 respectively
2 There is so much more I could have asked.
Balancing on Unstable Surfaces 
I didn’t know that anybody disliked that Pryor album. In my years with the funk band that became Midnight Star, that album was on constant 8-track loop, and much of our dialog with each other was lifted from it. Your post reminded me that there’s no way that album would get released today, which is sad, since it taught us to laugh at ourselves and to laugh with others.
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