For what seemed like an eternity, but was actually only a seven-month stay on Sampson Air Force Base in late 1955, I had a friend of sorts who drove me nuts because he thought he had the answers to everything. No kidding. He had memorized about 40 or so “old sayings,” including those of two Chinese philosophers. He called them, “The great thoughts of the past” and no matter what we were doing he always had some %$#@! quotation, which he thought was the answer to doing it right.
What he never seemed to grasp was the fact that most of what he claimed were “great thoughts” were actually comments about the obvious. From that day to this I have been happy that they closed the base we were on before I ended up either strangling that character or stuffing my ears with mud so I couldn’t hear him droning away all day.
Mind you, I don’t doubt that there is wisdom in the sayings of the ancients, but the very first thing I noticed about the ones my “friend” always quoted was that the old philosophers who had made them up quite often seemed to be doing nothing more than pointing out something we all know, and trying to make it sound like some earth-shaking discovery. For example, every time – every blessed time! – that we set out to go somewhere, my so-called friend said, “Lao Tzu say, Journey of a thousand miles begin with but a single step.”
It didn’t matter whether we were marching some basic trainees halfway across the base, or were just on our way to the mess hall for breakfast, he had to quote Lao Tzu to me. Luckily, however, I accidentally broke him of that one habit. I had just stepped out onto the front porch of the barracks one morning on our way to chow when my “friend” came charging out with his mouth in gear and his brain in neutral, tripped over my left foot, and went flying off the steps.
My! You should have heard him yelling as he sailed down those three steps and landed in the dust!
“The journ E — E — E! OH, HELL! UGH!” he screamed as he flew through the air and landed flat on his silly face.
“Watch out for that first step,” I said, smiling, but doing my best not to laugh because I hoped he wasn’t hurt.
After he had finally struggled to his feet and created a cloud of dust by brushing off his nice clean fatigues, I asked him, “You all right?”
“You tripped me on purpose!” he growled.
“Maybe I did,” I answered. It was an absolute lie, of course, but a good idea had popped into my head.
“Why’d you do that?” he demanded.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Huh? What?”
“Look, you keep telling me that Confucius says that when it is obvious that your goals can’t be reached, don’t adjust your goals, adjust your action steps. Well, I’m going nuts listening to you and your great sayings, and my greatest goal in life is to shut you up. So who knows? Maybe I adjusted my action on the steps.”
“That’s not what it means!”
“Oh, no? At least it kept me from having to listen to you shoot your big mouth off about Lao Tzu again this morning. And you know how to keep me from tripping you all the time? Please! No more great sayings! Okay?
And he did shut up! At least about the Lao Tzu thousand mile crap.
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Keep it Clean. Avoid obscene, hateful, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be Truthful.
Be Nice. No name-calling, racism, sexism or any sort of -ism degrading to another person.
Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article. Real names only!