Don't air your dirty linen in public

Friday, October 25, 2013

When I was growing up I remember hearing two phrases quite often from my mother and some of her friends. The first was, "Don't air your dirty linen in public." Of course that referred to the age where almost all homes had a clothesline in the backyard and the housewife was very careful to have the wash look nice, to hide the personal items in between the lines with the sheets or some other large materials so that the neighbors wouldn't know what your unmentionables looked like. Remember the little poem that some boys used to write in autograph books? "Roses are red. Carolyn's (or whoever's book he was writing in) are blue. I know because I saw them on the clothesline."

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