My plans at work for a Friday team training fell apart and were canceled on me. As I reflected on it, I found myself thinking of a line \u201cThe best laid schemes of mice and men\u201d and couldn\u2019t come up with the rest, or if it was applicable. I decided to use my extended memory, otherwise known as Google, and search it. I found a poem called \u201cTo a Mouse\u201d by Robert Burns.<\/p>\n
The story is that Mr. Burns was plowing his field and turned over the dirt of a family of mice. He recognized that they had carefully burrowed and built this home to be safe for the winter, but he had disturbed it and ruined their entire plan. He later went and wrote a poem.<\/p>\n
The stanza that I was recalling was this:<\/p>\n
But little Mouse, you are not alone,
\nIn proving foresight may be vain:
\nThe best laid schemes of mice and men
\nGo often awry,
\nAnd leave us nothing but grief and pain,
\nFor promised joy!<\/p><\/blockquote>\nSo this was a bit overdramatic for my particular situation. Although it rings true often enough in life. Funny thing is, I don\u2019t remember why I should know this poem. With some research, I know that this was a great inspiration for the book \u201cOf Mice and Men\u201d by John Steinbeck. That book I do remember reading in High School. I remember it because there was a generous helping of profanity within it. I remember well that my English teacher, Mrs. Charington, explained that we would read it out loud as a class, taking turns reading two paragraphs each as we went around the room. And if anyone was uncomfortable reading the profanity, simply pause and she would read those words out loud.<\/p>\n
When it came my turn, I abridged my sentence, removing the offending word. I didn\u2019t even think about it; my brain just does that as I read. I don\u2019t mean to imply that I read a lot of cursing; but when I do, my brain tends to just remove the offending word or phrase as I pass by. It is a talent or a training or whatever-you-call-it that I quite like. Mrs. Charington didn\u2019t like it. She stopped me, and made me read it correctly, pausing at the offending word so that she could read it aloud.<\/p>\n
In a class attended by 99% Mormon kids, the teacher pronounced a lot of swear words during that book reading. Which she explained was her time of the year to say those words out loud and relieve her frustrations in life.<\/p>\n
At any rate, I don\u2019t remember why the poem was coming to my mind today. I honestly can\u2019t recall when I might have studied it, or why it had any significance to my memory – except maybe connected to that senior year book reading?<\/p>\n
Strange.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My plans at work for a Friday team training fell apart and were canceled on me. As I reflected on it, I found myself thinking of a line \u201cThe best laid schemes of mice and men\u201d and couldn\u2019t come up with the rest, or if it was applicable. I decided to use my extended memory, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ryans-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.glorajean.com\/content\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.glorajean.com\/content\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.glorajean.com\/content\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.glorajean.com\/content\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.glorajean.com\/content\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.glorajean.com\/content\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1535,"href":"http:\/\/www.glorajean.com\/content\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1534\/revisions\/1535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.glorajean.com\/content\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.glorajean.com\/content\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.glorajean.com\/content\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}