Following all the Rules: The Rules I Still Keep (Part One)

“What's a rule from childhood you still follow and why?” There's probably too many to count for better or worse. No phone calls after 9 pm. Don't refuse food. Thank people and use your manners. Hold doors open for others. Rinse and reuse. Finish what you start. Don't open the door for strangers. No uninvited guests. Don't tell your friends what's going on at home. Don't cuss in the wrong context. Always lock the door. Don't do things without permission. Don't talk about that. Don't put things on the floor. Always figure out a way to eat, even if you can't afford it. Try something before you decide you don't like it. Wait until others are served before eating. I think that illustrates that I've got a lot of embedded rules and that's not everything. I'll kick this off with no phone calls after 9 pm. 

First, let's clarify that I grew up before the cellphone. I have a lot of memories of coming home and checking the answering machine. Most of those memories are bad and I haven't written about them (maybe I'll put them in the book). There's a couple of reasons why we had the no phone calls after 9 pm rule. Okay, mainly one. It would piss my dad off to hear the phone ring at night. Every rule I followed was either for my father, God, or Grandma. It's pretty much that simple. These were the ruling relationships in my life. 

Now that I've got a smartphone in reach most of the time, I still follow the no phone calls after 9 pm rule, even though I didn't vocalize it. I do this because I hate and have a borderline phobia of receiving phone calls, especially at night because of those answering machine messages, and because of those calls that were almost exclusively bad news. Almost every death I've grieved started with a phone call. The majority of which happened at night. 

When my dad called me at Bible study to tell me that my mom had overdosed and died, it was at night. When I received the call that my dad was going to die and I needed to say my last words, it was at night. When I had to call my grandma and tell her we were missing Christmas Eve because my sister and I had to take my dad to the emergency room for a 72 hour psych hold, that was at night. When my dad fell down the basement stairs and he called me to ask for help, I called EMS late at night, and had my friends race me home. This list is a lot longer with more deaths and suicidal calls notified by phone, typically at night. As a result, I'd just assume never have another phone call that I didn't initiate for the purpose of catching up with friends again. I compartmentalize that for work phone calls, but the mere sight of a landline phone, even at work makes me think of those heavy nights in front of the answering machine. 

Shifting gears to another rule. I don't refuse food (which my coworkers recently thought was a copout answer to an icebreaker question). It was a hundred percent conditioning. And, I've told you I turn truth into humor to cope with it sometimes. I don't refuse food because I was poor and I was brought up to eat what I was served. My kids don't have this rule and never will. However, it's so ingrained in me that I still follow it. My coworkers insisted that there had to be foods I didn't want to eat. There are, but that wasn't the question. I was responding to what food you'd refuse and the answer is I wouldn't. I hate asparagus. I've eaten so much of that without refusing it, unless I was asked if I wanted it, and said “no, thank you” (I don't consider that refusal because I was given the option). To this day, if I'm served asparagus, I eat it instead of refusing it. Most of the rules from childhood that I still follow are the result of conditioning. 

As for, don't tell your friends what's going on at home. Depending on the context, I've broken this rule. For the first twenty plus years of my life, I didn't ever break it. Nobody outside of some family knew that my dad was on addiction recovery medication. He's dead and it's a historical issue at this point, otherwise I still wouldn't talk about it openly. That's not just a privacy thing, it's a dysfunctional thing. It's the narrative that certain parts of who you are and how you live should be hidden. There's a difference between hidden and private. Hidden comes from mistrust. Privacy is just a boundary. The question was about how and why I still follow this rule. Mistrust. The ability to trust people with what's going on for me in the present, good, bad, or otherwise is absurdly difficult. People don't react well when I tell them I don't trust them. It's real simple, I was conditioned and traumatized into not trusting people. The list of people I trust without wavering is no more than a half a dozen. Odds are, I'll love you before I'll trust you. The people I trust showed me I could. 

The last one for this piece is, don't put things on the floor. This is a three part rule. My dad didn't want us leaving stuff on the floor because he had a bad back and would be angry if he had to bend over and pick up after you. As a parent and a person with a back injury, I find the rule reasonable, but my dad's delivery wasn't. We also had pets growing up and leaving stuff on the floor was a good way for it to be ruined by an animal. The third and most critical part of this rule is for me specifically. Things on the floor equal potentially dangerous obstacles for me. Much to the dismay of my children, I'm not able to play a variation of Hopscotch and Twister to navigate around their stuff when it's on the floor. Drawing attention to this part of the no stuff on the floor rule is really difficult for me. I feel like I practically have to fight or be annoying about it. 

The deep conditioning of rules that I've experienced lends to my inner rebellion. I don't care for rules for the sake of rules. They have to make sense to me. Sometimes rules get in the way of doing something well. This is definitely true for rules that have been conditioned to remain embedded long after they're instilled in you. “Full of anger, full of doubt, and we're breaking all of the rules” (Peter Frampton, “Breaking all the Rules”). I know the rules well enough to know when they need to be broken and when I can't break them, even if I wanted to. The rules I still follow don't always serve me well. Sometimes they do and other times they're roadblocks that I've yet to overcome. 

“Following all the rules, I hope that you'll just see me” (Serenity Haes, “Following all the Rules). In the end all the rules I still follow come down to conditioning and acceptance. If I follow the rules, maybe you'll treat me well, and life won't have to be so hard. Maybe the rules will keep me safe. No phone calls after 9 pm is a rule for emotional safety. Not refusing food keeps me fed and conflict free. Not telling my friends what was going on at home protected my dad and protected me from the unintended consequences of truth. Not putting things on the floor kept me out of trouble and keeps me physically safe today. To be continued. 

If you want to know more about the rules I didn't expand on, leave it in a comment, and I'll include it in part two.