JAWing On – Life on Okinawa

One of the common phrases one hears locals on Okinawa say when someone is trying to manipulate them is the negative connotation of “… my way.” Which actually means, “You shouldn’t do this your ‘my way’ do it our ‘my way’ because it’s more advantageous to what we want.”

When I was growing up in the 60’s, I was fortunate enough to have a father who thought it was his job to make sure his daughters weren’t babied. He thought it was his role to teach us to be self-sufficient and capable of taking care of ourselves, because he knew he wouldn’t always be there to fight our battles for us. At the same time he was wise enough to provide us some tools to fight those battles with. Since I was a very scrawny, red-headed, little girl at a time when being an “all American” girl was about buxom blondes, he gave me the gift of logic to fight with. One of the sayings he equipped me with was, “The party of the first part puts-down the party of the second part, because the party of the first part feels the party of the second part is superior to the party of the first part.” This was quite a mouthful to say in response to other children when they were taunting me, and sounded very nerdy, but it always worked. What I learned from that one statement was to look behind what a person who was trying to belittle me was saying to find the reason why. Thanks Dad.