If I walked into the kitchen without washing my hands as a kid, I'd hear a loud 'A-hem!' from my mother or grandmother. Now I count on other people to do the same.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My mother would thump me sharply on the head with a thimble or a spoon if I became too noisy with the whistle when I was playing I was a steamboat captain. She had no sense of the dignity of command.
When I was younger and my parents used to always slap my hand if I was picking my nose or if I was running around screaming I was told to shut up.
I was always a neat kid. I never wanted my hands dirty. I wasn't a dirty kid. A lot of kids like to run around. If I was rolling around the dirt, I went home and took a shower. That's just the way I was. I'm not sure. I might have been born with it.
When I was a child, she'd have me wash the lettuce ten times or open walnuts by hand to make a cake. I was like, 'Mom, this is ridiculous.' But now? I run my kitchen the same way.
When I was a kid, my mom used to run the vacuum cleaner, and the noise would bother me so much that I would run into the woods to calm down. I feel like that vacuum cleaner has been on since I moved to New York City.
I come from a very working-class background, so my family would have been downstairs in the past, as opposed to upstairs. People are often quite surprised to hear that, that I'm not actually posh.
I'm a hygiene freak. I'm like obsessive-compulsive when it comes to washing your hands.
I was a loud child, and if my mother sang to me, I would be quiet.
My mother, who grew up in Pennsylvania, literally washed my mouth out with soap once for saying, 'Shut up!' to my sister. She would have washed my mouth out with gasoline if she knew how foul my mouth was racially when she wasn't around.
I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.