Of Knowledge and Wisdom

      “I shall do so another time,” said Jack.  If you remember the story, Jack started for home after his first day on the job with a coin which he dropped and lost.  His mother told him he should have put it into his pocket.  So the next day, Jack was awarded a jar of milk for helping a dairy farmer.  He spilled most of the milk trying to get the jar into his pocket.

     So the mother told him he should have carried it atop of his head.  The next day he came home with piece of cheese (a hunk of butter in some stories) melted into his hair.  The next day he started home with a cat (piglet in some stories) which he tried to carry carefully in his hands, as per mother’s instructions for carrying cheese.  When he earned a chunk of meat for his next day’s work, he tied a string around it and “led “ it home as if it were a live animal.

     Old Jack gets a passing grade for knowledge, but a zero for wisdom. 

      I once heard a famous baseball player say that playing professional baseball was a daily lesson in humility.  What?  Million dollar star athletes being humbled?

      He went on to explain that if you hit .400, you were making an out six out of ten tries.  How many of us would consider four successes out of ten tries something for the Guinness Book of World Records?

      In many professions, the longer you hang around the more you learn, and you can avoid making the same mistakes.  Wisdom.  Poor old Jack didn’t have enough sense to learn from his mistakes.  In baseball, I would guess a hitter’s accumulated wisdom is balance by aging reflexes.

       As a high school teacher, part of my “other duties as assigned” was to help sponsor a class.  In this case, the class was the senior class, the event was graduation. 

     Traditionally, the graduates would recess to the auditorium to form a receiving line.  The sponsors stuck around until everyone who wanted to congratulate the graduates had passed though. We sponsors would go through the line last and then the line would collapse, the graduates would mingle and say their formal goodbyes.

      Each class seemed to have its own personality.  Some found it difficult to say goodbye.  The parting could take an hour or more before we could remind them how much they hated school and wanted out and now they had their wish.  Besides, parents, relatives and friends were waiting for them to show up at the many private receptions being held around town.    

      One class we had was gone within ten minutes of the last citizen who shook their hands.  This was a difficult class to work with because they didn’t work well together.  They didn’t seem to like each other.  It was difficult to get them to work on a project, such as making a float or decorating a wall for homecoming, or serving at the refreshment stand during junior year to raise funds to decorate for the big event of spring, the junior-senior prom.

      At this particular graduation, I watched the principal go through the reception line.  It was the Leo Buscaglia era when it was okay to hug everybody.  So the principal gave each of the graduates a hug.

     But he was having trouble getting away from one student.  Bert just wouldn’t turn loose of the principal.  He hugged him repeatedly.  As I watched my eyes were opened.  Move over dull, lazy Jack.  Make room for another dullard who couldn’t connect the dots.

     Old Bert had spent a lot of time in the principal’s office, not to get hugs, but in an adversarial position, behavior referrals from his teachers.  I even sent him there two or three times in the two years I had him.

      Bert was from a one-parent family.  He had plagued his mother at least since junior high.  She couldn’t control him.  He was always in some kind of trouble.  He had a sister who was polar opposite, likable, easy to get along with.

      As I watched the principal and Bert in their new-found affection for each other, a scene with Bert and me flashed through my brain.  I had deemed it necessary to physically remove Bert from my classroom.  The times when I actually laid a hand on a student could be counted on one hand—okay, maybe two.

     But in this case, something strange had happened. I grabbed his arm, lifted him from his seat and escorted him to the door into the hallway where I asked him to remain.   As long as I was in physical contact with him, he didn’t struggle, resist, or mouth off at all.  He just relaxed.

     What Bert wanted, needed was actual physical contact with a male, the father he didn’t have.  I managed to finally see that as I watched Bert and the principal, here on graduation day.  Strike three.  “Oh Jack, how could you be so foolish?”

     Wisdom requires knowledge.  Knowing what to do is mandatory. But timing is equally important, knowing when to act, when to speak.  “For everything there is a season, a time for everything under the sun.”

      A sign hanging on the wall in Aunty and Uncle’s house:  “Ve get too soon oldt und too late smart.”

     Lazy Jack was luckier than most of us.  On his last day of work, his pay is a donkey.  He shoulders the donkey as he should have done the chunk of meat.  On his way home, he passes by the prince’s house.  The prince’s daughter has suffered a tragedy and is withdrawn and can no longer speak.  Her doctors tell the prince, the only way to get her out of her shell is to make her laugh.  Many clowns have tried to make her laugh but failed.  When Jack comes staggering along the road with the donkey, legs sticking up in the air, on Jack’s shoulder, the princess breaks into peals of laughter.  She is cured, the prince marries her to Jack, and Jack and his poor old mother’s troubles are over.

     All of the unwise should be so lucky.