Tongue, cf Speech
Our Tongue’s Get Us Into Trouble
The classic movie, A Christmas Story, is a nostalgic look at growing up in Gary, Indiana, through the eyes of a boy named Ralphy. One scene depicts a school recess in the middle of winter. Two boys surrounded by their classmates argue whether a person’s tongue will stick to a metal pole in below-freezing weather.
Eventually one of the boys succumbs to the infamous “triple-dog dare.” Hesitantly he sticks his tongue out and touches it to the school flagpole.
Sure enough, it gets stuck. The recess bell rings. Everyone runs into the school building, everyone except the hapless victim. When the teacher finally looks out the window, she sees the boy writhing in pain, his tongue frozen to the flagpole.
While few of us have been in that predicament, we all know what it’s like to have our tongues get us in trouble. When we suffer the pain that eventually recoils upon everyone who speaks boastful words, lying words, bitter and cruel words, hypocritical or doubting words, we learn the truth of the proverb, “He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity” (Prov. 21:23).
M. Castillo, Whitewater, Kansas, quoted in Leadership, p. 49
Half Head of Lettuce
A man working in the produce department was asked by a lady if she could buy half a head of lettuce. He replied, “Half a head? Are you serious? God grows these in whole heads and that’s how we sell them!”
“You mean,” she persisted, “that after all the years I’ve shopped here, you won’t sell me half-a-head of lettuce?”
“Look,” he said, “If you like I’ll ask the manager.” She indicated that would be appreciated, so the young man marched to the front of the store. “You won’t believe this, but there’s a lame-braided idiot of a lady back there who wants to know if she can buy half-a-head of lettuce.”
He noticed the manager gesturing, and turned around to see the lady standing behind him, obviously having followed him to the front of the store. “And this nice lady was wondering if she could buy the other half” he concluded. Later in the day the manager cornered the young man and said, “That was the finest example of thinking on your feet I’ve ever seen! Where did you learn that?”
“I grew up in Grand Rapids, and if you know anything about Grand Rapids, you know that it’s known for its great hockey teams and its ugly women.”
The manager’s face flushed, and he interrupted, “My wife is from Grand Rapids!” “And which hockey team did she play for?”
Source Unknown
Epitaph
On a windswept hill in an English country churchyard stands a drab, gray slate tombstone. The quaint stone bears an epitaph not easily seen unless you stoop over and look closely. The faint etchings read:
Beneath this stone, a lump of clay, lies Arabella Young, Who on the twenty-fourth of May, began to hold her tongue.
Source Unknown
Quote
• Washington Irving said, “A sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.”
• Willian Norris, the American journalist who specialized in simple rhythms that packed a wallop once wrote: If your lips would keep from slips, Five things observe with care: To whom you speak; of whom you speak; And how, and when, and where.
• Publius, a Greek sage observed, “I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.” – Swindoll, Growing Strong
Tongue Twisters
• Ezio Pinza’s (singer at the Metropolitan Opera) favorite was, “Three gray geese in the green grass grazing; gray were the geese, and green was the grazing.”
• Actor Laurence Olivier often warms up with this one before going onstage: “Betty Botter bought a bit of butter, ‘But,” she said, ‘this butter’s bitter. If I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter. But a bit of better butter will make my batter better.’ So Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter, and it made her batter better.”
• Boris Karloff lisped, and the letter “s” was his problem. Among the twisters he used were: “She sells seashells by the seashore”; “Sister Susie’s sewing shirts for soldiers”; “Slippery sleds slide smoothly down the sluiceway” ; “A snifter of snuff is enough snuff for a sniff for a snuff sniffer.” A twister used by some radio and television announcers before they perform is: “The seething sea ceaseth and thus the seething sea sufficeth us.”
• The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick.
• Nine out of 10 people can’t say this twice in rapid succession: “Sinful Caesar sipped his snifter, seized his knees and sneezed.” – Frederick John in Insight