解放军文职招聘考试Grandma's Childhood

 Grandma's Childhood

I am beginning to wonder whether my grandmother isn't right when she complains, as she frequently does, that children nowadays aren't as well-behaved as they used to be. Whenever she gets the opportunity, she re­counts in detail how she used to be told to respect her elders and betters. She was taught to speak only when she was spoken to, and when she went out on her own, she was reminded to say "please" and "thank you". Children in her day, she continues, were expected to be seen and not heard, but these days you are lucky if you ever hear parents telling their children to mind their p's and q's .

If you give her the chance she then takes out of per bureau the old photograph album which she keeps there, and which she never tires of displaying. Of course when you look at the pictures of her parents you feel sure that, with a father as stem-looking as that, you, too, would have been "seen and not heard". Be­side him sits his wife, with their children around her: Granny and her elder brothers. It always occurs to me that perhaps those long, stiff, black clothes were so burdensome to a little girl, that she hadn't enough breath left to be talkative, let alone mischievous. It must have been a dull and solitary life too, for she stayed mainly at home during her childhood, while her brothers were sent away to school from an early age.

Nevertheless, my childhood was much freer than Granny's. I went to school with my brother, and I played football with him and his friends. We all spoke a common language and we got up to the same mis­chief. I would have died if I had had to stay indoors, wear a tight frock, and sew.