Mine is a very simple one. I grew up in a very industrial Midlands town - Derby. A very unglamorous town - now a city. But despite it's very low level street appeal, my dad used to often encourage me to "look up" i.e. appreciate the architecture of our industrial city.
I've had a life-long love of architecture thanks to my dad. I haven't studied it in a classical way and I couldn't be wordy in my descriptions of the finer points of it, but it's given me an ongoing appreciation of buildings and history in my life.
Not bad for a scruffy lad from a council house of 8 kids. Thanks Dad. You had class.
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Dad always said "be polite to everyone, you never know who you’ll meet again". Thought it was old-fashioned nonsense. Then you hit adulthood and realise the world’s tiny and reputations stick way longer than you expect
Being polite and kind are the two key skills to unlock an easier and happier life.
You just know that a silly number of people have fucked their first day in a new job after barging past a not-actually-so-rando on the train/bus in.
I’m 35 and recently a lady from the newsagents I did my paper round at as a kid got talking to my mum, and commented that she always remembered me for being so polite and the best paper boy they had lol. Really appreciated hearing that all these years later!
When I was a lad I used to be a bit of a grumpy git and I’d try and get in and out of shop transactions as quickly as possible. Now if the workers aren’t too busy I’m friendly. Some obviously don’t want to chat so I don’t force it. But if they’re willing for a laugh and a quick 2 minute chat then I do. And it makes everyone feel better.
Of course if it’s busy then I don’t hold up the queue.
Nobody ever told me that and now when someone I knew in school walks into the pub I leave.
I used to watch adverts where the person had an encounter with someone then it turned out they were their job interviewer or doctor. Stuff like that made me learn to be polite to everyone because you don't know when they will be important to you.
"You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young."
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen."
"Terrific"
My parents always told me, make the most of being young, it’ll fly past and feel like it didn’t happen.
I’m 40 now, I swear it was only yesterday I was 21.
The ironic thing is, then they were telling me this, they would have been younger than I am now.
I always have done my best to live this, I’d imagine myself at 80 and get really into it until I felt it was true then be ‘back’ in my 25 year olds body and appreciate the feeling of being young again. I’d think about it and trying to appreciate it. It just doesn’t really work, it’s not really possible I don’t think. You can appreciate it a bit at the time I guess but that doesn’t make any difference to how you feel when you’re older, it’s not like you’re thinking ‘ah yes I’m so glad I appreciated my 20s.’ You still feel like where the hell did the time go?! Time still goes and all moments are still fleeting whether you immersed yourself in that knowledge or not. Who knows what the whole point is!
Trust me, the next 20 years will go much much faster than the last 20
Oh, thanks. Merry Christmas to you too.
I'm also 40 (and a bit) and this is an important one. But it's also important not to conflate it with the bullshit notion that you youth is "The best time of your life"
School can be shite, and when you're a young adult, you're often trying to deal with situations you lack the wisdom and maturity to handle properly, which can be stressful. Add that you're likely not earning much which will also add to stress. Telling a stressed-and-skint 22-year-old that "This is the best it gets" is a bullshit thing to do to someone.
Slightly related, make the most of every moment with your children. They are with you most of the time until they leave home. After that if they visit, say, a day a month you may have less than a year with them in total. We're fortunate that our teens are doing Open University so they are still with us while their friends have gone away to study. I feel very fortunate.
One moment they're babies, and old ladies in supermarkets are telling you "they will grow up so fast", but you are sleep deprived and cannot imagine that. Next thing they're all grown up and critiquing your power point presentations.
I’m quite pleased I am trying to listen to my parents on this. I’m doing everything I can, taking up opportunities and enjoying being young.
Also, it’s a very good retort when they think I’m going out too much to say “but you said to make the most of being young!”
My mum said "be grateful for what you have, some kids had it worse." I grew up in a council estate, grew up in poverty with three sisters (I'm also a girl), in a 2-bedroom house. I hated the situation I was in; I was resentful and angry towards everyone. Mum died four years ago, I took over her tenancy, and I realised she was right. I may have not gotten the childhood I wanted, but I had a decent upbringing. It wasn't 'till I got to university after mum died that I realised how wrong I and everyone else was as well.
A guy in my cohort moaned about daddy not giving him a higher allowance for a week after spending £435.00 of his £1,000.00 weekly allowance on a bean bag!
Mum, I know you're up there, but thank you for not raising me to be spoiled. Thank you for teaching me to be a strong independent woman!
Brush your teeth.
No job is beneath you
This really came into effect when I was unemployed during the pandemic. I took temporary jobs that weren't the greatest but they kept me sane and happily led to my permanent job today. Taking what I could stopped me from spiralling.
Go to bed
but I'mmm nottt tiiireddddd 😔
Also not a direct quote but still resonates, it’s nice to be important but it’s more important to be nice -Scooter :D
I have a toddler and a baby. I'm in a season of my life where I really really wish I had taken this advice at every opportunity I have ever had.
"Life would be very boring if everyone was the same." I used to think this was just something my dad said when I moaned about friends not agreeing with me but it was their philosophy when they met anyone, regardless of ethnicity, sexuality or disabilities. And they were right, differences should be celebrated for enriching our lives and making them interesting.
My dad had many and they’ve assimilated into my personality along the way. Now he’s gone, it’s not the things he said that stuck with me so but how, when he died, I lost the person who was always completely and utterly on my side. He was so immensely proud of anything I did and would drop it into conversation all the time.
It’s a little bit tougher out there without that complete failsafe.
I don't really believe in the afterlife, but if your dad could read this your mutual pride would be complete.
“Get pregnant and he’ll have to marry you.” Haha just kidding no I didn’t heed that advice then — nor do I think it’s right when I look back on it now — thanks, mom, but I still think that going to university was the better option.
But I do look back and agree that “It’s important to get a good night’s sleep” and “It’s good to have a nice hot cup of tea.”
Why did she think he'd marry you if you got pregnant? Would you have even wanted to marry him? That's wild!
I'm with her on the tea and sleep advice though.
She lived/lives with societal rules of her own, it makes no sense and she is always angry that others don’t follow her societal rules. Undiagnosed mental illness is common in her generation.
Derby represent!
My mum said
Don’t let the bastards get you down.
'I feel like the richest man in the world most of the time, if I was in an accident, people would stop to help, call an ambulance which would come out for free, the police would show up to manage the traffic, I would be operated on for free, physio would be free and I would be on the sick with full pay for months.'
Okay, it's not 100% all the time, but he's not far off, live in other places and you know this isn't true everywhere. He's not an intelligent man but he is a smart one
If someone offers you drugs say thank you because drugs are expensive. Also dont inject them. Also grass then beer youre in the clear, beer then grass youre on your ass.
There's a German saying like that but instead of grass it talks about wine lol
beer then wine and you'll be fine, wine then beer, oh dear!
think that's the one I was taught (England)
We have the same in Dutch. I had no idea there was an English version.
Bier na wijn geeft venijn. Wijn na bier geeft plezier.
I was taught: “Beer before liquor, never sicker Liquor before beer, you’re in the clear”
There's an English one as well? Haha
Oh
When I left home at 19, and my Dad was driving me and my stuff to my new shared flat, he gave me this advice. I write this verbatim.
Pay your bills first. Once you've paid them you can do what you want with the rest of your wages. Piss it up the wall if you want to. And always wear a condom.
And I lived by that. Its the only remotely deep conversation we ever had.
Did your dad explain how you were supposed to piss up the wall while wearing a condom?
“If there’s wet paint on the front porch, use the back door”.
Lost on me as a child, but made perfect sense as a young man.
Does that mean what I think that means..?
What if there’s wet paint on the back door too though?
Call an ambulance.
OTOH, you don’t wanna go in dry..?
Your parents gave you that advice?
Always use a condom
But I agree with OP - always look up. There is so much that is missed in my town (Shrewsbury) if you don't look up at the buildings.
You also tend to see quite a few shooting stars if you look up a lot!
Awww that is probably my fondest childhood memory (back in the days where you would go out in the morning to hang with your friends, make dens and rope swings and not be back until it got dark).
lying down on the top of Winney Hill on a summers evening talking shit with your friends and just looking up watching out for shooting stars.
Shrewsbury represent! I don't go back very often, but it's a beautiful town.
Don’t settle for less and the only person your racing against is yourself
If in doubt, say nowt…
They didn’t .but my uncle said to learn the piano . He was from a time when every pub had one and if you could play you’d always get bought a drink.
Turns out he was an old alcoholic with shit advice.
Sounds like pretty good advice for an alcoholic.
Except you ever see a pub with a piano these days ?
“Sometimes you’re the fly. Sometimes you’re the windshield”
Alternative version I've picked up: "Sometimes you're the pigeon. Sometimes you're the statue."
“Don’t marry him”.
Really should’ve listened to them. Luckily I saw the light fairly quickly, and number two is a massive improvement.
Most of the time they're right.
If the wind changes, your face will stay like that.
Did it?
You can't say you weren't warned.
” Value every penny you earn. "
“You can’t beat a good sit down”
I chuckle every time
A cup of tea and a nice sit down are my two favourite things.
"If you're having sex with someone and you're not enjoying it just tell them to stop" - at the time I thought this was crazy and mortifying. Now I realise this is very solid advice and I feel lucky to have a mum who was cool enough to give me the sex talk while driving so I couldn't leave 😅
My mum was very frank when talking to my sisters about sex and orgasms etc, Unfortunately that liberal education didn't extend to similar conversations from our dad to "the boys", Different times.
Don't worry about things you can't change
My dad told me “School will always teach you to walk away and get an adult if there’s someone up in your face. But sometimes that’s not realistic. Some people, you’ll have to punch them to the ground first. It’s better to get in trouble for hitting a kid once, than have to put up with that kid making your life difficult for months while the adults piss about trying to get them to stop.”
Don’t get any job that’ll get you into debt, even at the beginning stages
Not through their comments but through their actions.
If you work hard, in any job, you get noticed and you get on in life. They have both done well for themselves, separately, without qualifications from school.
My dad grafted 46 years in a foundry in Derby. He came from a poor Irish background in the 1930's/40's. Unfortunately living hand to mouth in those days lead to him having a very poor education. He was barely literate upto his 40's. The most intelligent person I've ever met.
Often people with lack of literacy opportunities blag their way through life and become incredibly street smart. My dad was a supreme example of that. He would've been a scary big-brained individual given educational chances.
As it happened he was just brilliant without those options
This was my grandad to a tee. He was from Dublin, same time frame, and his family didn’t have money for shoes half the time he was growing up. He came over here and made a decent go of it as a painter-and-decorator. The way he talked about ancient history, though, he could easily have been an academic with a different start in life. Even into his nineties he still wanted to talk about the Republic whenever family talk got too boring for him.
Ya, no. Some of the hardest working people I know make peanuts.
Ya, no? That's some shocking English.
In any case, it's about playing percentages. Some people get lucky, some are unlucky, but making the best of your situation works.
Not in a lot of sectors. Working hard isn't enough. You need to be liked.
The beauty of a quiet town where nothing happens.
Even in poverty - and we were piss poor - it was nice for our parents to encourage us to punch upwards. I haven't become a captain of industry or anything similar, but I appreciate art, culture, architecture and similar aspects of life.
And it all came from my "uneducared" dad encouraging me to "look up" and appreciate some of the finer aesthetics of life.
Even scruffy kids, whilst not understanding opera or classical music can be enriched by some of the arts.
I have been.
2 things my Mum told me:
1) Never run after a man or a bus, there's always another behind.
2) Love many, trust few, always paddle your own canoe.
Skateboarding would ruin my knees
An hour (of sleep) before midnight is worth two after.
Don’t ever retaliate: they always catch the second person.
“Yes, and people used to keep pigs in the back garden” was a favourite of my grandpa’s whenever people started harping on about how things were better in the olden days. It’s stuck with me as advice not to look back with rose tinted spectacles on.
I grew up with coats on the bed as blankets. We were very poor but mostly happy. I don't think we realised we were "poor" because it was just normal to us.
My biggest regret was that my parents were trying to explain our family history, but we didn't listen,
I'm really sad that our family history is largely forgotten.
As an Irishman whose family has known emigration for generations I'm very moved by your memories of your father. Many of my forbears moved to Derby, Birmingham, Preston, Kilburn etc and some had greater success than others. And the loneliness and longing for home often loomed large for the Irish in those days when travel home was a luxury. But it's clear your dad, even if he didn't experience economic success, overcame any such challenges and had many riches he passed on to you. I read your words and think of and miss my own late father.
"draw kings off thrones and bankrupt nations" which I never understood as a kid but so as a middle-aged man.
My dad told me “don’t take any shit”. I adopted that quite fast to be fair
This isn't contributing to the question you asked, but I just wanted to say that I absolutely love visiting Derby when I stay there for the Download festival. It does indeed have a superb railway history and the local pubs are absolutely to die for. Brunswick Inn and the Alexandra Hotel - a railway themed pub with lots of memorabilia inside and a Class 37 cabin in the car park - are just absolutely superb.
Good on you for appreciating your towns history and your father for installing this interest in you.
“You won’t understand until you have kids of your own”. Young me would have rolled my eyes and thought he was being patronising. Now I have my own kids, I get it. Having my own kids really made me realise how much my parents love me and how lucky I am to have them.
"Son, a good shit is better than a bad shag"
Took a while to appreciate that.
Not so much the words of advice, but their ‘strategy’ in raising me. When I was young and stupid I felt so persecuted by them, so hard done by, I felt like Cinderella minus the fairy godmother.
My parents grew up working class, did well for themselves and had the money to buy a nice house in a lovely place and send me to a posh-ish school. Thus they had the dilemma of being two working class people raising a middle class child; they wanted me to have the values and work ethic they were raised with even though my environment was radically different from theirs growing up, equally while they wanted me to have the advantages of a middle class environment they didn’t want any of the shitty bits to rub off on me.
Their solution was to be fairly tough on me to try and replicate some of their upbringings. I got a very small amount of pocket money in exchange for chores, but I had to have a part time job lined up starting right after my 15th birthday as I wouldn’t receive an allowance once I’d turned 15. From that point on I was expected to cover all my non-educational expenses. I would be bought school uniforms and underwear, all other clothing I had to buy myself, all toiletries, I had to pay for my own haircuts, I did have to buy my own sanitary towels but my best friend‘s mum had a go at my mum for that, so that was one expense I didn’t have to cover. I had far more chores than any of my friends, my parents had a cleaning lady but she was under instruction not to clean certain parts of the house so that I would have to do it.
It was hard being surrounded by girls whose parents treated them like princesses, who had allowances and nice clothes and didn’t have to work shitty jobs after school and then go home to clean areas deliberately left dirty for them.
Their strategy worked; I do have a killer work ethic, I do value money etc. I’m now in my 40s and out of my friend group from that school I’m the most financially comfortable by a good margin, I’ll be ‘retired’ well before 50. Being raised as if you’re from a working class mining family with barely enough money to eat when you’re actually middle class with all the advantages and privileges that come with money-having parents EXCEPT being spoiled wasn’t fun as an adolescent, but adolescence only lasts a few years. Living life as if I’m playing on hard mode when I’m actually playing on easy mode isn’t without its disadvantages but, overall, it’s put me well ahead of where I’d be if I’d been handed everything while valuing nothing.
My Dad encouraged me to pay into a pension, and in my 20’s and 30’s I didn’t see the point.
He retired at 53, and although he died relatively young (at least for me-although any age would’ve been too soon 🥲) at 73, he at least had 20 years playing golf and enjoying his retirement.
I’m 50 now and can’t imagine ever retiring!
It doesn't cost anything extra be nice.
My grandfather told me to do what I love and I won't ever work a day in my life. He was wrong on some levels but correct on most.
Don't wipe your arse with broken glass
Like youre dad mine told me to look up and like you I have gained an appreciation of architecture that most people just simply never see, I've not spent much time in derby despite being a Derbyshire lad, I have spent time in Leicester City and there's some fantastic architecture if you look above the boring glass and steel chain store shop fronts. I was thrilled to see the carved stone fresco of the original Thomas's Cook building depicting various modes of transport , I wish I'd got photos of it tbh, thanks for reminding me to look up
'you just need to think less.' years of CBT and medication later and yeah, it was actually true.
Work hard in school now so you can have a relaxing job in the office. It was a way for me to stop being lazy but it did help me land a cushy office job I am enjoying instead of doing manual labour in the rain that goes underappreciated.
the only piece of advice I can remember my mother ever telling me was to marry rich. Did I listen -no,was she right-yeah probably
Never trust anyone. I asked my dad if I could trust him, he replied no, not even him. Fuckin wish I’d learnt that lesson the day he picked me up and sat me on the table to impart that advice. But I was young and naive, amongst other things
With respect that’s terrible advice. I would say trust everyone untill they show they themselves to not be worth it. Not trusting means you forgo opportunities, love and all manner of adventures.
Open your heart, have faith and live to the fullest. Not trusting closes so many doors.
They are victims of their own Demise, that’s why they are always the victim.