Silly Old Bear

“He that tooteth not his own horn,
     the same shall not be tooted.“

- Horace Bratcher

I’ve told you about Horace Bratcher before. Horace is my buddy. He is a World War II veteran, spent a number of years barbering, trained cutting horses, worked in local industry, and served our local school district as maintenance supervisor at the Junior High School for a number of years.

Horace is a self-made philosopher of the highest caliber, often spending hours at a time perusing books about philosophy and philosophers at the local library. When he runs across an idea that interests him, he writes it down and memorizes it, storing it alongside other worthy bits of wit and wisdom in his memory bank. He often shares his homespun philosophies with me on his daily visits to my office.

One day, as Horace was leaving my office, he shared the above philosophy with me … and then chuckled. It stuck in my mind, so I thought I would share it with you.

There is another wise saying that closely follows the one above, and must be remembered by anyone who makes a habit of going around tooting his own horn.

“He that tooteth his own horn too much, the same shall cause his friends to grow weary of his tooting.”

So, like most things in life, tooting requires balance.

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This entry was posted by Paul O'Rear on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 5:18 PM. If you would like to keep track of Comments on this post left by other Silly Old Bear visitors, you can do so through the RSS 2.0 feed. You are invited to leave a Comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.