All Truisms are False! Part One

by Robert Archerd, December 4, 2022

My Aunt Ruth lived by cliches, or, for her, truisms. Two of her go-to favorites were “It takes two to tango” and “There are two sides to every story.” The first, she would use any time any of us five kids (my brother and I, and her three, all within three years of each other) would complain about one of the others. I always figured by “two to tango” she meant one person can never be at fault alone, that some other always must share in the blame. And by the second, that whatever one claimed happened, another’s different claim had equal weight.

But even as a preteen I easily saw through the nonsense of both, that one person could absolutely be the entire cause of a problem, and that no matter how many sides, or versions, a story has, there is only one thing that actually happened. But it was the 1940s, and whatever an adult said, went. The old adage, “Children are to be seen and not heard,” was then the law of the land.

So, Aunt Ruth had a cliche/truism to cover any and all situations. It not only saved time, it eliminated the inconvenience of weighing pros and cons, as well as any possibility of fostering an appreciation for democratic processes. It was, as all children came to know, an era for them of unrelenting authoritarianism.