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Self-Cancelling Arguments
My stepmother – Shelley – has many virtues, but all too often it seems that the ability to form a watertight argument isn’t one of them. Indeed I once found myself in the position of watching her conduct a monologue in which she decided to stop taking the car to school of a morning but ended up with her deciding against it five minutes later.
No other person got a word in edgeways, it was a pure case of managing to talk herself out of something entirely unaided – quite a fascinating thing to view in many respects.
She is also able to sound off for ages on the evils of immigration whilst conveniently forgetting that her own mother – sadly recently departed – was born and raised in Holland and only popped over when the Second World War kicked off.
Last weekend, however, she outclassed herself. First, whilst merrily beavering away over a pile or ironing, she put forwards the view that a couple of generations ago people were able to live longer. She then put forward a load of caveats that would have prevented this, which it seemed was destined to become pretty much endless.
“So,” I said, after a moment’s pause in the speech, “what you’re basically saying is: in the old days people used to live longer as long as they survived?”
Best was yet to come though. She later took the opportunity to blast my father for his dependence on powered transport to go anywhere. “I mean,” she fumed, “you’ve got all these opportunities around for nice long walks but you never do any bloody exercise do you? All you do is your keep fit!”
Dad looked over at me and I’m afraid to say I just dissolved into a fit of giggles which took me a good five minutes to recover from and were in serious danger of damaging me.
Thankfully she is able to recognise these flights of self contradiction and laugh about them or I guess evenings at home would be quite frosty at times.
Bless
Posted on May 11, 2008 | Filed Under My So-Called Life
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