Suggestion. On the surface, a straightforward word. But it conceals an array of complexities. “May I make a suggestion?” one of my teachers was fond of saying, back in those times when students were called pupils. Not many pupils had the temerity to reply, “You may not, sir!”
I wish we had. The temerity, that is. We didn’t, sadly, and we allowed Mr G. to make his suggestion.
Needless to say his suggestion was always diametrically opposite to what we, as pupils, may have had in mind.
“May I suggest that you finish the exercises on the present perfect tense, then go out to play. That way, you get to play with a lot more freedom with nothing at the back of your minds to worry about.”
We fell for it, time after time. And in this way we permitted ‘suggestion’ to control an aspect of our lives. Our playtime. It was quietly governed by Mr G. who, now I think of it, might have been laughing up his coat sleeves.
Then came a form of liberation. The rebel years arrived. With the school gates behind us, the very notion that someone could suggest we do something and get us to do exactly that was laughable. Because, in the rebel years, you do exactly the opposite. Apples and oranges. If apples were served for lunch you demanded oranges. And vice versa.
“Why don’t you do such and such today?” my mother would suggest and I would counter, “I’ll do it later.”
It usually involved tidying my room.
In the rebel years, tidiness is a word you don’t encounter all that often and if you do, you ignore it. It’s too ‘old world’, ‘of another time’. Clothes must be left lying around in a certain state of disarray — it’s an arty form of chaos and parents, in the rebel years, never seem to get it. Suddenly a fence goes up and the rebel finds himself on the other side. ‘Us versus them’. Brought about by ‘suggestion’.
“Leave him alone,” my gentle father would advise my not-so-ready-to-give-up mum.
“If we don’t nag away he’ll think we condone this behaviour. What a neat room he kept before all these changes, influenced by heaven knows what!” she’d say.
My mother was reluctant to blame it on the music and the influential musicians of that time, she herself having fallen under their spell. She loved all the songs I listened to and read, entranced, some of the foreign music magazines that came out of England, from relatives there. David Bowie and Sweet and Slade and the Glam era.
Looking back, it’s hard to say when the fence came down, for come down it does on all teenage rebels, I believe. My father was always right in advising, “Give it time. It’s a phase. It will pass.” When it passed exactly I cannot tell. But that said, I still don’t take easy to ‘suggestion’ and I suspect there are millions out there who feel the same.
As a voracious reader, I don’t mind a synopsis on the dust cover of the book, as a guide to what the story may be about. What I detest is all those promotional blurbs. “Riveting! I couldn’t put it down.” Or, “This book will crack you up. It’s hilarious.”
I feel a personal sense of pity for the book, because I know I am not going to venture anywhere near it. It’s fate has been sealed, sadly, by some over-zealous celebrity reader. Likewise, with films. I don’t mind hearing someone say they enjoyed a movie. The moment they recommend that I see it because, “You simply will love it”, I get derailed by the suggestion itself. I procrastinate and have umpteen times never got to see the movie. Someone once said, “By all means let’s be open-minded but not so open-minded that our brains fall out.”
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
