It’s a glorious week. It is finals week on campus. That week when some students suddenly become interested in, or more accurately, concerned about, their grades, and ask, “What do I need to do to pass your class?” I generally respond along the lines of, “The same thing the students that are going to pass my class did…the coursework that was assigned each week for the past 16-weeks.” That doesn’t seem to be what they want to hear? I’m not sure what they want to hear?

After all, they are a college student, they have been in classes before, they do know how this school thing works. “What do I need to do to pass your class?” Perhaps they are implying “doing” something other than the coursework to pass my class? Washing my car, doing my laundry, shuttling me around campus in a rickshaw, sitting in meetings for me, reading the newspaper to me with an Irish brogue, handing me a briefcase stuffed with cash?

While contemplating the potential grade value of a personal rickshaw service, I stopped into the campus convenience store to get a snack, and the student-employee working the cash register said, “You look tired.” No “hi”, no “how’s it goin'”, just “you look tired.” To which I responded, “You mean old?” She just smiled. Smiled a smile that I’ve seen people courteously, yet disingenuously, point at elderly people as they don’t listen to a word they are saying. “You look tired.” Well missy, you look as if you may fail my class.

“I don’t feel tired” I thought, as I stopped into the restroom to see if there was a discernable sheen of overt haggardly tiredness smeared about my face. Nope. All the craggy crevices and furrows are in their preferred places of prominence. Right where I saw them that very morning as I was contemplating trimming my ear hair or giving them another day of freedom and frivolity. I guess I should have trimmed them.

The power and sway that can be exerted on us by something as simple as a few random words has always been intriguing to me. An intriguing, and a cautionary tale regarding the importance and impact of choosing one’s words wisely. There are lots of words to choose from, but if one is feeling truly wise, they often should abstain from choosing at all. Or at least deferring utterances until sufficient levels of contemplation, or blood alcohol, are achieved.

They say we have two ears and one mouth for a reason. We’re supposed to listen twice as much as we speak. What do “they” know? I say we have two ears so we don’t have to use five fingers to hold our sunglasses on while our one mouth runs through the briers, runs through the brambles, runs the bushes where a rabbit, or common sense, couldn’t go.

As I heard Mr. Savelkoul proclaim many times in high school history class, “It is better to look the part of the fool, than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.” I can’t remember what he said about history? So it goes.