Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

You grew up in a weird family.

Everyone did.

The International Order of the Wacky and Quirky Rulemakers created most of the rules, but each family was given considerable latitude in making or changing rules for the weirder.

Most people can remember bringing a significant other home to meet the family. That was stress-inducing. Much preparation was required to cover all the idiosyncrasies of individual family members, and a good deal of time was spent covering family rules.

Some family rules are common and not goofy or zany. Here are some reasonable rules.

Always take a jacket. You never know.

Don’t complain about the food unless you prepared it.

No shoes on the sofa, couch or davenport.

Halloween candy is family candy.

Elbows off the table.

Use your inside voice when you’re in the house.

If you open it, close it.

Use your manners — the good ones.

If you borrow it, return it.

Hold the flashlight steady.

Put it back where you got it.

If you’re thirsty, there’s water out of the tap.

If you can’t think of anything to say, say “please” or “thank you.”

Turn off the lights. No one here works for the electric company.

It costs nothing to be nice.

Close the door. We’re not heating the outdoors.

How do you know you don’t like the food if you don’t try it?

Those are all sensible things and there was no reason to warn a visitor of their existence.

But most clans had other applicable rules.

My family had a three-second rule. That rule stated that if we dropped food onto the floor, picked it up within the three seconds and blew on it, we could eat it. Apparently, it took over three seconds for germs to find dropped food, and if one germ happened onto the food sooner than that, a human-produced wind with bad breath would dislodge them. We used to have a five-second rule, but discovered that we had a four-second dog who grabbed every morsel of food in that period. The only exception to this rule was the five-minute rule that applied to Mom’s sugar cookies. They were that good.

Never complain about a free cookie.

Don’t complain about the weather unless it complains about you.

Whenever you get your tangue all tongled, the best thing to do is to find a tee-hee’s nest with a ha-ha’s egg in it.

Don’t slam the door. The neighbors living a half-mile away will complain.

Wipe your feet and wash your hands or wash your feet and wipe your hands.

If you’re starving, take a cold potato and wait.

Never stick your nose in a skunk’s business.

All spiders are to be called Charlotte. That was my contribution.

Anything can be a breakfast if you eat it early enough.

Despite what you’ve heard, rules aren’t meant to be broken.

“Yuck” isn’t a short form of grace to be said before a meal.

If you won’t eat your vegetables, eat someone else’s.

Be happy to see everyone, even the people you’re not happy to see.

No one eats until the cook sits down at the table.

If you want to borrow the car, you must perform an interpretive dance showing how you’d use it.

Don’t chew with your mouth open while you’re jumping on the bed.

We don’t have a kids’ menu.

It’s an adult’s job to say stupid things. It’s your job to pretend to listen to them.

If you’re going to throw a tantrum, wait until you have a large audience.

Whoever washes the clothes gets the money left in the pockets.

You can wear one church shoe and one school shoe if you want, but you’re still going to church.

The furniture is moved regularly to give your shins something to find in the dark.

Never make an appointment with a proctologist who refuses to wear gloves.

Whatever you do, don’t sit in father’s chair.

I once heard of a family with only one rule — one rule! It was, “There are no rules.” I believe that to be apocryphal.

What do you have without rules? Anarchy, which leads to chaos.

And what does chaos lead to?

It leads to chess becoming a form of Australian rules football.

Al Batt’s columns appear in the Tribune every Wednesday.