Words

I almost never saw my grandparents in recent years, but as a young child I lived with them every summer while they indulged my many spoiled, pre-adolescent whims.

One day, when I must have been a particularly meddlesome six-year-old, my grandfather said, "You know, at birth every person gets a certain quota of words allotted to them for life.  It's impossible to tell how many words anyone has, the numbers vary widely, but when you've spoken all of your words, you die."  This affected me deeply and I immediately resolved to horde my remaining lot.  For the rest of the day, I expressed my demands by mumming, pointing and stomping until my grandfather told me that gestures counted even more than spoken words.  Foiled, I started to worry about how many words I had needlessly burned through in my careless six years.  From then on, I thought, every word I speak had better be really necessary.  This is how I learned about economics. 

The next day, I asked my grandfather if the story about the words was really true.  He said, simply, "No."  My introspective period had lasted a day and I was back in action.

My grandfather and grandmother were married and inseparable for almost 75 years.  She died a year and a half ago and he didn't speak much after that, although I don't think that it was because he was trying to stretch out his days.  He died peacefully at the age of 99 and we buried him today.

I do a lot of talking.  It's pretty much my entire job.  Right now, I'm sitting in the airport departure lounge getting ready to fly for a few meetings and two speeches.  I'm going to pare down my PowerPoint decks a bit.  Probably not every word is really necessary.  I'm going to try to make it last a week this time.