Assignment 19-Eliot Smith

"Never miss a good chance to shut up."-Will Rogers


     On the surface, I'm usually quiet.  However, as soon as you're around me for prolonged periods of time, I will start to open up.  This involves me talking.  A lot.

     I try to be funny during the vast majority of the time that I'm rambling.  This humor, occasionally, involves pushing boundaries to a point where it's still comfortable, but still comedic.  This becomes a problem when I push a tad too hard and actually break someone's boundaries.

     This has happened a handful of times, one happening rather recently.  I unknowingly poked fun at a certain part of someone's life of which they were insecure, and they basically broke down in front of me.  I apologized over and over and the situation was eventually rectified, but I still felt horrible for what I had done.

     I was told this quote after explaining the conflict to a friend, and realized how insanely applicable it was to my life.  If I could have just shut my flapper before saying what I did, I could have spared the emotional damage afflicted to the victim and my embarrassment after it.

     Humans as a race say some pretty stupid things.  These range from Bill Clinton's famous "It depends upon what the meaning of the word "is" is" to Arnold Schwarzenegger's "I think that gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman."  We say things that upset others, make them laugh, and make them cry.  If all of us, especially me, could learn when to shut up, the world would be a less cruel place.