I've thought about this for a long while......because my mother was a very wise woman (as was her mother) and she dished out a lot of advice! Most of it was funny, yet some of it I live by to this day....be it literal or metaphoric!

The one that contains both analogies of above is......

"If someone spits in your face.....break their jaw"!

She told us to do unto others.....look before we leap.....what goes around, comes around......wear clean underwear.....don't have sex till you're married (why buy the cow...yada, yada, yada).....if you don't know where it's been, don't put it in your mouth.....blood is thicker than water......feed a cold and starve a fever (or....maybe it's vice-versa...."sorry Mom, but I don't know anyone who gets that right).....etc. And most of that advice was just stated and therefore the rule, and so I guess she was mimicking her mother and her mother's mother. But she always had a story to go with the advice that was closest to her heart.

In the instance of spitting....she told me of a time when she was very young. She and a few of her friends were playing an outdoor game of some sort (I can't remember the game now....but I'm sure I got details when Mom explained it), when a boy came up to them and demanded to play. Now, this boy had been giving them grief for some time and my mother was afraid of him. She had told her mother about him and his behavior, and her mother told her that he was just trying to fit in and that my mother was to be nice to him (the do unto others thing). So, when this particular instance occured, my mother tried to explain that the game had already started and that he will get a turn in the next round.

No sooner did she say that, when the boy walked up to her and spit in her face and told her she was mean and that he should be able to play and that she didn't make the rules anymore.....he did! My mother ran home crying and told her mother what had happened. My grandmother asked her, "How did you feel when he spit in your face"? Mom said she felt like punching him but remembered her mother's advice to do unto others (yada, yada, yada) and just ran home instead. My grandmother shocked my mother by saying, "Being nice to others is one thing, but when they spit in your face....you break their jaw.....you don't run away"!

Well.....it seemed to me that my mother tried to follow her mother's advice to the tee.....but I sure wish grandmom had of given her that advice BEFORE Mom got spit on......Ewwwwww!

P.S. My grandmother was a strong spoken Scot with a heart of gold........and a fist of iron!