To speak or not to speak? A case for holding my tongue.

I’m trying to figure out how many times I wish I’d kept my mouth shut. 

As I fill in the mental spreadsheet that may eventually yield a total, patterns emerge in the data: From birth to age 7, for example, I have no entries. The numbers rise in a gentle slope from age 7 to 12, and then sharply spike to age 23. 

The numbers stay at a plateau until I’m 27. At last, they start to sink gradually to today – which already has several entries. As of this evening, based on estimated frequency over time, the number of examples is surely in the thousands. 

Here’s a sampling: The first thing I remember wishing I hadn’t said was at age 7. It was “I’ll do it,” to a neighbor. He’d asked for a volunteer from a group of children playing in the street outside his home to spray a half-empty can of insecticide on a hornet’s nest in an evergreen shrub next to his garage. As the hornets erupted from the papery nest, I had but one thought: “Uh-oh.” 

The neighbor was an FBI agent, so I thought he knew what he was doing. Anybody involved in shootouts with kidnappers, bank robbers, and enemy agents wouldn’t steer me wrong, would he? Looking back, I’m betting he was a forensic CPA.

Many of the things I regret having said fall into vast self-explanatory categories: “things I’ve said to police officers in an effort to lighten the mood” or “unintentionally irritating things I’ve said to waitstaff before they brought my food to the table.” 

High school was an especially rich time: “Anything I said to a girl” and “witty responses to vice principals” brim with colorful examples. Closely related to those, in graduate school I added “witty but undeniably testy responses during the oral defense of my very precious work.” 

I regret telling one of my athletes to “gut it out” and compete through an injury when I was a brand-new coach. I also regret telling him it was worth it. I regret even thinking it was worth it.

There were a number of times I regret having said as a parent, “Don’t do that,” to our boys, instances almost perfectly balanced out by the times I regret having said, “OK. Why not?” Or, better: “What could possibly go wrong?”

As a traveler, I regret saying whatever it was I was trying to say in German. 

I never regret having said, “I love you.” Except once. I was in my office having just hung up the phone after a call with my wife when the front gate guard at our campus called to tell me I had a visitor headed my way. I thanked him and, just as I hung up, added, “Love you!” 

I stared at the phone. The security guard’s name was Bill, and he was a nice enough guy, but I didn’t really mean to say, “Love you.” I’m sure he was staring at his phone, too. 

For weeks, I checked with a friend in campus security to find out when Bill was on duty. During those times, I avoided entering or leaving campus. Bill eventually retired, and then I could come and go freely again.

Things I regret not having said? This is a much shorter list. I regret the times I kept my mouth shut when I should have been apologizing, admitting fault, or speaking a hard truth. I regret not saying goodbye to some people I figured I’d always be seeing again. I regret not saying thank you to people who probably wondered why I seemed to be taking them for granted. These instances are rare, but they pack a wallop. 

Finally, I regret not asking our server in Venice just exactly what part of the cephalopod (squid, cuttlefish, inkfish – I’m still not sure) on my plate was edible. When he cleared our dishes, his face got a little pale, and he said, “Ah. I see you ate, ah, the, ah, head.” 

So, yes, there were times I really should have piped up. 

Reviewing my spreadsheet, I see I learned many things the hard way. The ancient Greek Stoics may be right: It’s better not to speak. And, if you do speak, say as little as possible. 

And that’s all I have to say.