One of the people around here I admire a lot is Cyrus "Silence" MacGruder. Silence, as we have called him since he was real little, came by his nickname honestly. He truly only talks when it is absolutely necessary and then what he says is usually important. There is a story that has been going around here about Silence. It tells that he didn't say one word until he was four years old. Not Dada, Mama, Baba, or nothing. Then after all those years of quietude he comes out at the dinner table one night with, "These beans ain't cooked enough." His folks were astounded. His mamma said, "Cyrus, you can talk."
His daddy said, "Boy, if you can talk that good why did you wait so long to say something?" And Cyrus said, "Because the beans has always been cooked okay, until tonight."
Now I know a lot of you are saying you have heard that story before in some manner. Well, I read it in Reader's Digest myself, but that don't mean it didn't start with our man Silence MacGruder.
Tales of Harper, short stories and poems
about the fictional town of Harper, Mississippi is available on Amazon Kindle
Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer.
ReplyDeleteMuhammad Ali