Preface To Outlaws: Goody Two Shoes

(image from here - the story too!)

This blog post was supposed to feature a mild confession from me that - unless you count shoplifting when I was a kid, or running red lights, or sometimes using torrents to find movies I really want to see, I have never really broken the law.  Certainly I would never be called an "outlaw."  Indeed, I was going to say, an outlaw would called me with disgust a "goody two shoes."

That was the plan until I discovered that the phrase "goody two shoes" - which seems self-explanatory - actually lent itself to a story with that name.  Here's how the Wikipedia summarizes it (you can also click the link below the image to read a longer version):

Goody Two-Shoes is a variation of the Cinderella story. The fable tells of Goody Two-Shoes, the nickname of a poor orphan girl named Margery Meanwell, who goes through life with only one shoe. When a rich gentleman gives her a complete pair, she is so happy that she tells everyone that she has "two shoes." Later, Margery becomes a teacher & marries a rich widower. This earning of wealth serves as proof that her virtue has been rewarded, a popular theme in children's literature of the era.

The Wikipedia notes - as does the blog linked under the image - that the phrase was used long before the story.  But while "goody" to us seems a so-sweet-it's-insulting thing to call someone, it was actually short for "goodwife," a kind of precursor or synonym to missus.

The Wikipedia also tells us that, "The story popularized the phrase 'goody two-shoes' as a descriptor for an excessively virtuous person or do-gooder."  I guess Margery Meanwell was an excessively virtuous person.  It's strange that it's become something of a pejorative.

The truth is, I think I was thought of as a goody two-shoes as a kid, & sometimes used it to good advantage.  A teacher might let me take a make-up test in an empty classroom & not suspect I might cheat.  When I sometimes did.  & when I was in my shoplifting phase - which didn't last long - I was often overlooked as a nicer kid while my more unsavory fellows were watched like hawks - which left me to steal things unobserved.

But I would also probably tell on you if you did something really bad.  & most probably I'd be called a "narc" more than a "goody two-shoes" at that point.

In any event - I was never an outlaw.  Never really aimed for it, but had I done so, I would've missed spectacularly.