Simpler Times

LITERACY AIN’T EVERTHANG

By Charles D. Williams, M.D., FACR, FAAP (“Pedro”) This I don’t understand. Recently I read this in a newspaper:

“Current market valuations coupled with increasing volatility has expanded option premium and created substantial opportunity in the option market for those investors and speculative risk tolerance and basic understanding of options.”

I read it again and again. Still I don’t understand.

It seems to me that some folks git educated beyond their intelligence and use big words and hard words to sound uppity and to confuse us. Many of my folks weren’t educated but literacy ain’t everythang and sometimes it complicates thangs. Even though my Dad wudn’t educated, I did understand him. Once Dad said, “Since I ain’t educated, I’ll have to use my head.”

What I remember most about growing up in Moultrie was the people and their smiles, their handshakes, their compassion in times of need and their strength in times of trial. But it was in their simple words that I received samples of their wisdom. There was something remarkable about their understanding of the most complex circumstances. These difficult problems were made simple by just a few simple words, well chosen.

From Daddy I heard: “You’re only as good as your word. Trust comes from your hand. You give a man your hand and it’s good as done.” At least Dad’s word and others like him meant more than all those complicated fancy words you could put on paper or in a contract and at least you could understand them. These folks with simple words did know about respect, honesty, fairness, and hard work.

Grandma also used simple words and phrases which have stuck with me over the years. Phrases like: “There’s no right way to do a wrong thing; play with fire and you git burned; whoever lies down with dogs, gits up with fleas; and when the horse dies, it’s time to git off.”

I can imagine an over educated intellect taking phrases like beauty is only skin deep and saying pulchritude possesses solely cutaneous profundity or phrases like birds of a feather flock together and saying members of an avian species of identical plumage congregate or phrases like as the ball bounces and saying thus is the erratic manner and direction in which the resilient spheroid exhibits its’ compressive elasticity when propelled against a surface.

“Pek” Gunn, post laureate of Tennessee once said:

“Once I used high sounding phrases But one day at last I found Truth in story simply stated Renders it no less profound”

Once Daddy said, “Pedro, if you sass your Mama, don’t mind yore teacher and don’t do yore homework, I’m goin to take you out behind the barn and skin you alive.”

This I understand.

Reprinted with author permission from More Simpler Times.

Dr. Williams’ sequel book, More Simpler Times, can be purchased from the Capital Medical Society. All proceeds from the book are donated to the Capital Medical Society Foundation’s We Care Network program. The total sales from his books have raised over $40,000 for the CMS Foundation’s We Care Network.