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She Says

"They say"... my grandmother used to say that all the time. "You know they say...", she'd start and then regale us with something she'd just read, seen, or heard about from her "educated" brother.

"You know, they say that caffeine actually makes you hungry, so you should never drink coffee when you're on a diet."

"You know they say that walking is the best form of exercise and everyone should walk at least a mile a day."

"They say that the average woman's skin is so dry in Winter they should only bathe or shower every four days."

When I was younger, I found her "they say" quips intriguing and amusing. I would think of how time-consuming it would be to do everything they say. Just to get in all the servings of the food groups we're supposed to get would require near non-stop eating. And now you're trying to tell me I have to walk a mile a day, comb my hair 100 strokes to activate its natural oils, take a handful of vitamins (especially B because it is what helps the other vitamins to be absorbed), get my car's oil changed every 3,000 miles and make sure that any bird doo doo is immediately removed or the car's paint will disintegrate.

Over the years, the "they says" began to evolve, and be replaced by other "they says". Although walking never ceased being the best exercise, biking became the better cardio-vascular workout (and then something else, and then something else). Although the B vitamins are still the ones that help the others to be absorbed, the handful of other supplements my grandmother and many like her took each day increased then decreased according to the tenets of the "they sayers".

The "they say" phenomenon had me so intrigued, I actually wrote one of my first plays on the subject. In the play the "they sayers" turned out to be a quartet of men of complementing thoughts and traits, living in a cave in North Dakota. It was a comedy...obviously. And it was very funny. The premise, I suppose, was that there is no other way to say these wonderful, life changing things without being isolated from the rest of the world. You have to be completely insulated to come up with stuff that contradicts itself every other year.

But, as I matured and saw first hand how rapid the changes of the world were happening, my respect and admiration for my grandmother grew. She was born in 1920. The amount of changes and advancements that have happened in her lifetime make up over 50% of the advancements we have experienced since the beginning of man. The truth

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