Just use your common sense
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
We'd had this discussion now several times, "Just use your common sense," I said to the little girl in the back seat of the car, "What do you mean?" Em wanted to know.
"Common sense is something you already know if you just stop and think about it — like when you come over to the house and you see me standing there with a paint bucket in one hand and a brush in the other and you say, 'What are you doing?' and I say, 'Eating lunch,' and you say, "Nah, you're painting."
"Common sense," I went on, warming to the subject, "is looking both ways when you cross a road even if there's not a lot of traffic. Common sense tells you that if there are railroad tracks, there probably are trains and that if it's snowing outside you should put on your coat." By this time, I was on a roll.
"Common sense," I said warming to the subject, "is not getting a puppy if you don't want to have to spend a lot of time with a full-grown dog — taking it on walks, feeding it, being responsible for it every moment of every day for the rest of its natural life." "Ohhh," she said. Living in Ramona, she knew about dogs.
That little discussion got me thinking about whether common sense is really common knowledge and how is it acquired? We usually learn about consequences which follow choices from our parents, right? I know mine put a healthy fear into my soul right along with the 10 Commandments and common sense told me that if I broke those rules, I'd be in BIG trouble. After all, common sense is to help you avoid pain, isn't it?
After moving to Kansas, I realized that the kind of common sense I'd acquired living in the city was different from the common sense of country life. Whenever you venture into strange territory your supply of common sense needs to be refurbished. While I knew what parts of San Francisco to steer clear of and how to handle crowds and traffic jams, I had some things to learn about the country.
"Get off the phone when there's a storm," Aunt Anna said, "it's because of the lightning. And don't stand under trees." We looked askance at this information but later discovered it made sense.
"Don't drive out into a stubble field," Tooltime Tim told us, "you could cause a fire." Me, the insatiable picture-taker on the prowl for a candid shot had never thought about that — "It's common sense," he said with a know-it-all look. But the other night, watching bull riding at the rodeo, I had serious doubts about the level of common sense in these parts.
"Just a minute folks, I think, we've got one of the cowboys injured," said the announcer with a solemn tone. Hello! Just what part of you doesn't anticipate pain when you climb up on top of a big old bull that's bred to buck and twist and turn and you're flopping around on his back like a rag doll without enough stuffing and any minute you're going to go flying off onto the hard ground and land with an agonizing thud so that silly bovine which you've just antagonized into the next county with a strap around his middle can come over and stomp on you? Were you not expecting this? But meanwhile the crowd is hushed with anticipation and I'm being jabbed in the ribs and told to keep quiet. After all, we're at a rodeo event and there are just some things common sense should be whispering in your ear — like BLEND IN!
Oh, well. It's another day in the country and it wasn't all that long ago that my Dad gasped, "You're quitting a perfectly good, high paying job in California to move to Ramona? You've got to be kidding! And you're doing this when the presidents are changing? Don't you know what that does to the economy? Have you no common sense?"
