{"id":1084,"date":"2010-03-22T22:41:49","date_gmt":"2010-03-23T03:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/?p=1084"},"modified":"2010-03-22T22:58:40","modified_gmt":"2010-03-23T03:58:40","slug":"since-when-is-silence-a-bad-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/since-when-is-silence-a-bad-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"Since When is Silence a Bad Thing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In North Carolina a high school showed up with a piece of red duct tape across his mouth. “Silence for Christ” was written on it.\u00c2\u00a0 He was suspended<\/a> when he refused to remove it.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure, but I think I was in tenth grade when I went to a class with a 45 record on each ear.\u00c2\u00a0 The teacher had a perfect, foolproof way to handle it.<\/p>\n

(Some background may be necessary for our younger readers.\u00c2\u00a0 Back then we listened to music on plastic disks called “records.”\u00c2\u00a0 (ri k\u00c3\u00b4rds\u00e2\u20ac\u00b2)\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Singles were sold on smaller disks called 45s.\u00c2\u00a0 For some reason they had a much larger hole in the middle of them than albums did.\u00c2\u00a0 Large enough that you could stick an ear through it.)<\/p>\n

I had been horsing around with some friends and somehow ended up with a 45 on each ear.\u00c2\u00a0 Someone dared me to go to class that way.\u00c2\u00a0 I was never much for taking dares, but this one was harmless and would only get me in minor trouble. It would be worth it to see how Mrs. Mitchell would react.<\/p>\n

She didn’t.\u00c2\u00a0 She barely glanced in my direction and started class without mentioning it. I was not only disappointed, but began to feel like an idiot, sitting there with my ears sticking through two hit singles.\u00c2\u00a0 I waited three, four, five minutes, for some reaction.\u00c2\u00a0 There wasn’t any.\u00c2\u00a0 I sheepishly removed the records, and stopped trying to get a rise out of Mrs. Mitchell.<\/p>\n

His teacher could have used the same method to achieve the same result, and it wouldn’t have become a news item.<\/p>\n

And if ignoring him didn’t work, if he kept wearing the tape, day after day, it would be even better.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 How many times have you wished you had a nice piece of duct tape when hearing some fundamentalmidget\u00c2\u00a0 spew on and on about. . .well, nearly anything?\u00c2\u00a0 We should do whatever we can to make this a huge fad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In North Carolina a high school showed up with a piece of red duct tape across his mouth. “Silence for Christ” was written on it.\u00c2\u00a0 He was suspended when he refused to remove it. I’m not sure, but I think I was in tenth grade when I went to a class with a 45 record […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1084"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1089,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084\/revisions\/1089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}