Mind your own business!

“He was spreading it around.”

“A bit of ‘How’s your father.’”

“A little bit of Hanky and plenty of Panky.”

As a boy I was constantly reminded not to ask questions:

• Mind your own business
• That’s got nothing to do with you
• Shut up
• What did you say? (said in a threatening sort of way, hand raised…)
• What’s it got to do with you?

After a time, I began to realise that cupboards didn’t contain real skeletons but that they did have something within them that I wasn’t supposed to discover. And from that time on, my mind automatically switched on to ‘Record’ whenever there was a hint of, “This is something young Dennis shouldn’t know; hush! Whisper!”

Since then, I’ve opened up family cupboard doors wide, only to find there’s nothing to cause the brow to furrow, the nose to wrinkle in distaste or my pulse to race… I do faintly remember someone, a male, who parted his hair in the middle and wore tight pants but was never able to find out any more than that.

Ah, the bewilderments of youth!

Dennis Crompton © 2009