{"id":314,"date":"2006-02-12T11:06:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-12T10:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/2006\/2\/not_proper_1.html"},"modified":"2006-02-12T11:06:00","modified_gmt":"2006-02-12T10:06:00","slug":"not_proper_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/2006\/02\/12\/not_proper_1\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Proper"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nI’ve recently finished this book<\/a>, and really enjoyed it. The bit about the white noise at the end of an LP and how when you’re with the right person it can go on and on and you just don’t care had me welling up with nostalgia and grinning over the memory of dorm rooms and Cocteau Twins records and kissing my first boyfriend back in 1986. <\/p>\n

\nBut the entry for ‘Common’ brought back memories too, what with its slipperiness and ever-shifting quantification – which seemed weird because it wasn’t a word that was used in my family vernacular. Lying in bed that night, it occurred to me what it is that’s so familiar about it. Unlike most of the American kids I knew, who had things that were Allowed and Not Allowed, generally for either rational or obvious or because-i-said-so reasons, in our house, with my Very Geman mom, there was the deeply opaque concept of Proper. Or, more to the point, Not Proper. It was virtually guaranteed that anything I wanted to do, right up until I moved out of the house permanently (and indeed for some time afterward – I can’t quite come up with when it disappeared from common usage) would be Not Proper. This included but was by no means limited to:\n<\/p>\n