“You look tired. Maybe you’ve been working too hard.”

“I worked like a dog today,” my mother would respond. “Can’t you see how nice the house looks and how frazzled I look?”

‘If we were in the business of creating mixed metaphors, this would be a world-class effort. The dialogue isn’t made up. I heard it often during my childhood in the days when women stayed home cooking and cleaning and men sailed to the saline mines.

My recently deceased Aunt Manuelita Lucero, who owned a car long before we did, often visited our home while the older children were in school. Mom and Tía would lament about housework, and thereby found reasons to invoke the names of various animals with which to compare themselves.

Whereas I have always respected the work ethic of both my mother and my aunt — in fact the work ethic of most women — my concern here is not with the condition of houses but in their choice of words.

I was 5, not yet in school when I began hearing the animal allusions as a gauge to how hard they toiled. Mom’s expression, sure to be unleashed when Dad arrived from work, was “I worked like a pig all day.” My Tía’s animal of choice was a dog.

Even at the time, as the youngest child, I questioned their choice of menagerie reps. I wondered, “Is it possible that Tía’s work was so intense that she soon felt like a big canine, curled up in the living room and copped a few zees?”

And in Mom’s case, was her porcine description of her work totally accurate? Could she have meant that her chores at our house on Railroad Avenue broke her down to the point where she envied the porkers?

Before I grew wiser and learned never to question adults’ word choices, I asked them exactly what they meant. I wanted to know how the dog/pig references related to housework. You see, it’s possible to work like a Trojan or even a horse or a mule. But when was the last time you saw a pig laying bricks or a dog trying to teach high school freshmen?

But to cover my bases here, let me emphasize that whatever I said was due to curiosity, not sarcasm or bear-baiting. I wanted to know more about that dog-pig-work equation.

So I joined the conversation. But I emphasize that we Trujillo children were not, under any circumstances, allowed to interrupt grownups. Trying to find an opening between their accounts of heavy lifting, scrubbing, sweeping and cooking, I unwittingly became drawn into the discussion. Mom said, “Why even Mannie (my nickname) can tell you how hard I work.” I soon regretted my participation.

In smarty-pants fashion, I said something like, “Ya know, I went outside and saw some neighbor dogs digging holes, dragging a telephone pole to the hole, then wiring it and replacing the dirt before putting up several guy wires.”

That pronouncement brought glares my way. It was a while before they realized that my exaggerating the matter wasn’t helpful. If, without being asked to, I had recited variations on my own distortions, that might have produced a “que cute!” response. But since the animal work reference was directed at Mom and Tía, I realized I was in trouble.

Remember, none of us had ever seen dogs or porkies working on a project. True, dogs bury bones and pigs create deeper mud holes, but work — in the sense of planning, progress and purpose — isn’t their bailiwick.

Anyone who’s read Aesop’s Fables knows of many tales punctuated with animals. Geese and foxes are particularly prominent. And notice how we provide adjectives like “sly” to foxes and ascribe other animal characteristics to people.

Who wouldn’t like to be strong as an ox, busy as a bee, gentle as a lamb, curious as a cat, or have the eyesight of a hawk?

Well, I was chided for my insolence that day. The irony is that as I mentioned these mythical animals building massive Interstate projects, I kept imagining how clever my siblings would think I was for coming up with the imaginary utility pole project.

I wasn’t the one to trumpet out my brilliance when my older siblings arrived from school. Nooo, that was Mom’s job, who made it clear I had been out of line. And then, she emphasized the news by warning that they ­— the older brother and sisters — ought never try what I did.
I’m convinced the rest of the family heeded Mom’s words.

And, at least for the rest of their lives, I worked like a dog never again to be impudent in my relatives’ presence.

• • •
Those blasted auto-correct features on computers and cell phones! In my world, I use lots of deliberate misspellings. I prefer to express gratitude with the word “thanx” rather than the other, more common spelling. However, there’s a chance that my rendering of that word will be corrected as this column makes its way to print.
Another advantage of being an overly creative speller is being able to tell others the typos were deliberate.
Yes, I hear there are ways to disable the auto-correct feature, but I haven’t learned how. But what about human fact-checkers and auto-correctors. A few Optic readers never let a factual error go unpunished. Routinely I hear from Chad Boliek, John Geffroy, Richard Lindeborg and my sister, Dorothy Maestas, who tell me I should have used “circumference” instead of “diameter.” In a recent column. Or that I miscalculated “pi.”
I now realize my recent “pi-making” treatise went awry when I wrote about something called “Pi Day.”
But as long as we’re on that subject, I now have a question for you:
We know about some of the knights of the Round Table, such as Sir Lancelot, Sir Galahad and Sir Bors.
Can anyone identify the most obese knight? And why he’s so named?
Hint: It is neither Sir Spamalot nor Sir Lunchalot.

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