If Everybody Else Jumped Off The Dock…

My mother was one of these parents who was inherently suspicious of the entertainments devised by other families. The usual pattern would be, we’d ask for permission, she’d say “Oh, hell no!”, the rejoinder would be some whiny form of “But Mom, everybody else is doing it…” and then she got to deliver her favorite line:

“If everybody else was jumping off the end of the dock, would you?”

Well, actually, Mom…