Whenever I hear the command, “Don’t take it personally!”, I recall my sister saying this to me. I had just told her how I happened to overhear my mother (nearly 60 years ago, now) on the phone say to someone on the other end of the line: “By the time Brian came along, it was every man for himself.”

Although the point I was trying to make was how lucky I was to be in exactly the right place at the right time to hear that expression, the conversation devolved into my vitriolic response.

“How can I not take it personally when she called me out by name?”

Yes, I can see that what she was saying was that, at the tender age of 26, having four kids was maybe one too many, but still, the fact that she mentioned me as the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back made it seem like something I could easily take personally.

She had another child—a daughter—with her second husband just a couple of years after I was born, so maybe her expression really was just about the boys in the family. Maybe “every man” applies only to the men we had to learn to be at such an early age.

By “lucky”, I mean that after I heard that, I started taking care of myself. I bought my own food, learned to cook, and started to realize growing up early was a tough but effective survival mechanism. Paperboy rules!