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By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, tries to stay out of the way as the keeper sorts through the childhood advice that he has tried to live by, and hereby eliminates the following: “If you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all.”
Most everyone was given this advice by mothers, teachers, aunts, grandparents and anyone else within hearing of your calling another kid a jerk or worse, causing you to question adult wisdom since calling the other kid a jerk came with a high level of satisfaction, and was an undisputable fact in your opinion.
Obviously in his job as a newspaper columnist, the “say-something-nice” dictum was necessarily often violated by the keeper, resulting in complaining letters to the editor, one even from the keeper’s mother who was offended by the keeper’s column take on the stoicism of Norwegians.
With a long history of not abiding by it; and living in a world where calling someone a jerk or worse is literally unavoidable, the keeper hereby eliminates the “say-something-nice” from the list of advice he was given as a child.
Next he plans to discuss with Phyllis the validity of the childhood advice they both got to not sing at the table.
Photo by Bill Stokes