The Auctioneer - Part 2

"Hey, all right sir, open the $#@^!in' gate and let the *&%#@^ out, and what are you gonna @$!^@%in' give for 'em?"*

"Well -- there was a boy in Arkansas, who wouldn't listen to his Grandma, when she told him that he should go to school...."

Why in the world did I go to school? I should've dropped out at the earliest moment and gone "behind the barn" and "worked up an awful storm" and "practiced calling bids both night and day." But no, I went to school and got what out of it exactly?

Well, I suppose it's not school's fault, really. I mean, there have to be plenty of auctioneers who weren't drop outs. A few anyway. What does being a drop out and being a successful auctioneer have to do with one another? Probably nothing. It's like anything else, would be my guess. You can drop out and become great at anything. Just as you can drop out and be a miserable failure. The other extreme is you keep going to school and become something. Or you go to school and become a miserable failure.

As to being an auctioneer now, at this late stage in my life, my mouth has probably grown together too much to be supple enough to call bids. I've heard that, that jaws unused will harden, the sockets become gummy, sticky, and can barely move. That's why when you hear elderly people talk, they do a lot of this, "Yahhh, well, Ahh, Huh?" And I'm getting there.

*I threw in a few extra syllables there -- words -- to make the point that I can supplement the cadence and still keep it on beat. Plus it's my way of spitting fury at the fact that I went to school and never became an auctioneer.