Ben and Me_ From Temperance to Humility - Cameron Gunn [26]
The Beginning and End of Silence
Why did Franklin place Silence so early in his program? In his autobiography, Franklin wrote:
And my Desire being to gain Knowledge at the same time that I improv’d in Virtue and considering that in Conversation it was obtain’d rather by the use of the Ears than of the Tongue, & therefore wishing to break a Habit I was getting into of Prattling, Punning & Joking, which only made me acceptable to trifling Company, I gave Silence the second Place.
As far as I can tell, no one knows from whence sprung Benjamin Franklin’s devotion to Silence. What is certain is that it predated his course of virtue. Indeed, Franklin’s earliest writing was done under the pseudonym “Silence DoGood.”
Franklin was an apprentice printer to his brother. It was not a happy relationship, if Franklin is to be believed; it consisted of more than the normal servitude such a situation might entail (or at least more than one might have expected in a familial situation). Franklin was desperate to break away from his brother, and he finally achieved this by becoming nominal head of his sibling’s paper after his brother’s imprisonment for writings embarrassing to the government of the day. The change in ownership was a ruse, but to make it complete, the articles of apprenticeship had to be discarded and secretly rewritten. Ben used the fact that his brother could never speak of the rewritten apprenticeship to escape the situation. A brilliant use of Silence.
How had I done in honoring Franklin’s second virtue? Had I succeeded in breaking my own habit of prattling, punning, and joking? Was I acceptable to more than trifling company? I’m not sure that I was ever acceptable to even trifling company, and if I was, I’m not sure that they’d appreciate being called “trifling.”
Notwithstanding any failures in the achievement of this virtue, I do now see its benefits. I spoke less and listened more. I avoided gossip and thus learned new things. I held my tongue, and I was allowed to speak. Not bad for Week 2.
I clung to that illusion right up until I looked at the next week’s virtue. Order is on deck. I had a house full of knickknacks, a desk full of paper, and a mind full of clutter. I suspected I was about to meet my match.
SILENCE
{CHAPTER 3}
Order
Let all your things have their places;
let each part of your business have its time
MY DOG IS INSANE. WAIT, I DON’T WANT TO OFFEND ANYONE. MY DOG has canine mental health challenges.
I’m not sure what the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders diagnosis might be, but whatever is wrong with her tiny beagle brain manifests itself through acute bouts of anxiety. She pees at the sight of bald men (a problem of growing—or receding—proportions in my household), fears all creatures great and small (with the exception of insects, which she hunts with the ferocity of a lion), and once walked backward for two blocks because a frog leapt at her.
{ A place for everything, everything in its place.}
Her “issues” would be of little concern if they were not accompanied by serious physical health problems. Billy (whenever we told someone her name, my youngest daughter, Darcy, used to yell, “She’s a girl dog!”) has Addison’s disease. That was the same condition that caused President Kennedy such discomfort during his life. And like the American electorate, we didn’t find out about her condition until it was too late to make any decisions about our selection. Addison’s is an endocrine disorder in which the adrenal gland produces insufficient amounts of steroid hormones. We discovered it when it produced, in Billy, two of its most common symptoms: vomiting and diarrhea. A 3 a.m. cleaning of runny beagle feces from a child’s bed is a true test of the strength of the human-pet bond.
I blame Billy, or more precisely our selection of her, on a personal character flaw (my person, not hers): I am perpetually disorganized.
Getting a dog was a natural stage in the evolution of our family. First came courtship, then marriage, next children, and finally,