You would be, too, if you’d been told since birth to constantly ‘smile’ and ‘be sweet’. At some point in our advancing age, all that holding back has to stop, and decades of righteous anger come out. It can be a sight to behold.
The transformation to “Little Lady-hood” began when you could barely walk! I remember constantly hearing “Little Ladies do this”, “Little Ladies don’t do that”.
One of my worst offenses happened by accident. While playing in the yard of an aunt’s house, I had a Co’Cola bottle in one hand and a rolled-up comic book in the other. A little boy kept repeating the silly rhyme about “Beans, beans, the musical fruit”; I told him several times that was not nice, and to stop it. Like little boys everywhere, he got a reaction and kept right on doing it. In my righteous anger and offended Little Lady sensibilities, I decided to swat him over the head with the comic book; except, I picked the wrong hand and hit him over the head HARD with the Co’cola bottle.
You can imagine my mother, who now believed she had a dangerous juvenile delinquent on her hands. “Little Ladies do not whack folks over the head with bottles” was heard around my house a LOT in the following days.
The only exception to this rule of Be Sweet was when Belle’s were allowed a periodic hissy fit, and they throw good ones. General items that provoke this; false girlfriends, lunk-headed men, and anything to do with a wedding.
