March 25, 2006
Oh, how I wish I had not said that.
One must be very careful these days what one says to anyone, except maybe your dog.
There are lots of reasons to be careful.
If you happen to be running for political office, for instance, anything you say will be misquoted and used against you. You will look like a fool no matter what you say.
If you happen to encounter the “long arm of the law”, you have the right to remain silent. Good idea to not put one’s foot in one’s mouth and take your medicine.
If you are called in for a visit with a child’s teacher, remember: children seldom misquote you.
Darn. Instead, they usually repeat word for word what you should not have said.
Unlike running for office, you will get to hear your actual words played back exactly as you said them. It is as though children have a tape recorder in their brains.
Meanwhile, most of we adults of the aging variety, would merely like to remember what we said or did not say.
Maybe we used to have photogenic memories, but now we do not even have film. Wish I had said that myself, but I cannot remember, for the life of me, who did.
I suppose our memory difficulties do give us a bit of an excuse for saying foolish things out loud.
Thankfully, one can always count on the family pooch to listen carefully and not judge what silly pratter comes out of our mouths.
Dave Barry, famed humorist, understood my hypothesis completely when he commented, “You can say any foolish thing to a dog, and the dog will give you a look that says, ‘My God, you are right! I never would have thought of that.’”
If you only have a cat around the house, your comments will be ignored with a yawn and a stretch. That is all you are going to get from the cat.
Let us take a tally so far: one must be very careful when we talk to the media, the police, or our children, but the dog and the cat are safe.
Is there anything else we need to consider before we open our mouths?
Actually, there is.
Political correctness, but I will not even go there.
I figure, that as we age, we get a pass occasionally for our foolish remarks.
At 55, people may frown when we say the wrong thing; at 60, perhaps, one eyebrow will go up; and at 65, one might see a twinkle in someone’s eye. At 70, our remarks could be received with a smile. At 80, we can get away with anything because people just laugh and say, “Oh, isn’t that cute.”
Jenny Joseph said it best in her book, “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple.” Her famous poem of the same name, written in 1961, surmised that when she turns old she will wear purple, learn to spit, spend her pension on brandy and summer gloves, gobble up samples in shops, and sit on the pavement when she is tired.
As she noted, foolishness can be turned into gleeful defiance as one ages, but one does not need to wait on it.
Jenny added, “…maybe I ought to practice a little now? So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised when suddenly I am old and start to wear purple.”
The same goes for fretting too much about our foolish remarks. After this, I will say I am just practicing.
