Things I have learned about communicating and interacting with others... When they've sounded "Taps" in Army boot camp ending the training day -- it's not really a good idea to strut up and down the barracks hallway and impersonate your drill sergeant when you think he's gone for the day.
Suppose you're in the fifth grade and in the school spelling bee in a crowded gym with your Mom looking on. You misspell a word and they "ding" you out of competition. And you react into the microphone with a certain four-letter word that you've heard your Dad say a gazillion times before when he's angry.
When you get an e-mail from a "friend" in your office asking for your opinion about the boss's "latest and greatest idea"… never, ever hit the Reply All button.
If you're visiting a foreign country, say, like Nicaragua, your Spanish-speaking skills won't necessarily work if the stranger you're trying to speak to turns out to be Egyptian.
You meet a celebrity, a guy who has co-starred in 1960s beach movies with Annette, and the best thing you can mutter is Boy, you sure do have a lot of kids to be such a short guy!
That when you are young newspaper reporter and writing a crime story and on deadline -- and the sheriff's last name is "Dick" -- be careful of typos that place the word-article "the" before his name. Some folks reading it the next morning might think you're editorializing and the sheriff doesn't think the mistake is very funny. A related lesson? Copy editors don’t always keep your bacon from being tossed into the fire.
Say you're 12 years old and shoplifting a necklace for a girl in your class as a Christmas present, and you turn around to the man who has been trailing you and say, Sir, this may seem like a strange question, but why are you following me? I hope you don’t think I’m shoplifting!
You have just been introduced to give a presentation to a large crowd, and as you stand to approach the microphone you forget that you're still furiously trying to dry-rub water that has spilled onto the front of your pants.
That an uptight, sexually repressed elderly third-grade teacher with hair the color of mold on Velvetta cheese monitoring the school cafeteria will never believe you when you tell her that the reason you didn't eat the mashed potatoes on your plate is because of an allergic reaction that will cause you to bleed from your ears and eyes and eventually kill you if you eat them.
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