When I was about 13, a friend of mine came up with a nickname for me that I was determined to nip in the bud: The Rambler. Seems I was given to a bit of the motormouth, and he teased me mercilessly about it.
To those of you who know me now, I leave the task of judging whether I have successfully completed my course of treatment for logorrhea. I have not, however, succeeded in shaking this recent round of a different kind of -rhea, which puts me in a very foul mood as I await the results of lab tests to determine whether I’m fit to travel.
Knowing that I’m headed to India, though, and not South America, I have little hope of encountering the “real” rheas of the world. That’s no rheason to be down at the mouth, though. India has plenty of birds to try for…
OK, Ben, this I do NOT believe. The motormouth part, that is. All else I’ve read on your blog I take as gospel — and really enjoy reading! But . . . motormouth??? NO.
Hope you feel great soon!
Meme
I kid you not. I was younger than everyone else in my class, so in 10th grade, when a 12th-grader teased me about talking too much (I believe what set him off was my question, a propos of nothing, whether anyone had seen my new comb), I just pretty much decided to shut up. And then the wise old dictum variously attributed to George Eliot, Mark Twain, and Abraham Lincoln (I can’t find it in Bartletts) “It is better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt” pretty much became my watchword. Publilius Syrius said it, in his Maxims, in the 1st Century BC: “Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.”; it’s also in the Book of Proverbs: “Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.”