shhhhhhhhhhh...

Once,
I stopped talking,
For a week.
*pauses to allow for comments from the peanut gallery.

It's true.  Ask Dave Orosz; he was there.

All my friends know that I talk WAY too much - always have.  Sometimes my inner voice is telling my outer voice to shut the fuck up.  I get it.  Of course I get it!  Do you think a guy that weighs 400lbs is unaware that he is overweight?

So one day I woke up and decided to conduct an experiment:  I would remain silent for a week and see what happened.

Day one was a big deal.  It was basically a daylong game of "charades".  If my running off at the mouth all those years was intended to garner attention, I was definitely taking the wrong tack.  Shutting my mouth brought me more attention in a day than I'd ever experienced prior to that.

"Are you sick?",  "Do you have laryngitis?",  "Is this a dare?", "How long are you going to keep this up?"

Someone asked if it was for spiritual reasons and I realized the answer was "Yes.".

It was 1987.  I was a Lance Corporal in the Marine Corps, stationed in Okinawa, Japan.  I was a computer operator and worked with mainframe IBM computers.  It was like working in a civilian facility only everyone who worked there was dressed in military garb.

My colleagues clowned me for about half-a-day, after which my choice to remain silent was treated with reverence and respect by virtually all my friends, colleagues, and superiors.

During that week, I could imagine a life unspoken.

Or, at the very least, until I actually had something to say.