How to be a lady, continues

We weren't really raised as ladies. When harvest time came around, there we were out in the field, bending over at the waist to pick string beans or strawberries. If we had to bring the cows in for milking, short, sedate steps hardly worked. We took what strides we needed for getting the cows in and avoiding the hazards of cow pads in the pasture. We did, however, practice the sedate walk and crossed ankles in the confines of our living room. My sister did pretty well, but I never mastered the art of walking with my feet pointed forward. My right foot turned out and still does to this day. Since my feet didn't reach the floor, I had trouble crossing my ankles, and often forgot and swung my legs back and forth, a no, no.
Rule number one was broken before I ever got out of second grade. It happened one day when the teacher sent the little kids out early for recess, and I and my fellow second-grader, a little boy named Sherman, went out the door onto the porch. We didn't go out onto the playground because there was a cow out there. We were in something of a quandary, because we were supposed to go play on the swings, but we were afraid of the cow. So we sat down on the edge of the porch, side by side, and waited for the big kids to come out and deal with the cow. After a moment or two, Sherman put his arm around me and planted a kiss on my cheek. "I'm going to call you Dotty Dimples!" he announced.
His kiss and endearing words came just at the moment that the older children came through the door, and were duly reported to the teacher and subsequently to my mother. Luckily, neither took action, but years later when I visited home again, my mother introduced my to a tall, good-looking man and announced that this was Sherman, the little boy who kissed me in second grade. Mothers never forget.
The name stuck, though, and today I am known to chat-room visitors as Dottie Dimples, which causes some rather amusing comments.
The kissing rule wasn't broken again until I was fourteen, when a neighbor boy, myself and my cousin (who shall be known as Jane, though that wasn't her name) went into a dark room to develop photographs. There in the dark, quite unexpectedly, he planted a kiss on my lips. He must have been nervous because his lips were trembling. He said not a word and I remained silent, as well. We eventually emerged into the lighted parlor, where I got another surprise. By the meaningful glances he cast in my cousin's direction, I realized that in the dark, he had made a mistake. He had kissed the wrong girl. He had meant the kiss for my cousin. She, poor girl, had no idea what he was trying to convey to her, and I suppose he took her attitude for indifference. Of course, I didn't tell my mother.
Because of my uncle, it was hard to follow the hicky rule. He was a teenager and thought it was his mission in life to hicky every girl he could catch and I was an easy victim. Many a hicky I tried to hide under my collar or a scarf, but it wasn't easy. There was no way to make it fade away. It stayed until it wasn't there any longer. After i escaped from his vicinity, I never got a hicky again, but in later years I did get a whisker burn or two.
These rules no longer apply. One has only to watch a TV show or visit a coffee bar to see that my poor mother was wasting her time. That was then and this is now. No one, not even those of my generation, follow these rules anymore.