Yelling ones head off

[Guest guest]

In the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific some villagers practice a

unique form of

logging. If a tree is too large to be felled with an ax, the natives

cut it down by yelling at

it. (Can't lay my hands on the article, but I swear I read it.)

Woodsmen with special

powers creep up on a tree just at dawn and suddenly scream at it at

the top of their lungs.

They continue this for thirty days. The tree dies and falls over. The

theory is that the

hollering kills the spirit of the tree. According to the villagers,

it always works.

Ah, those poor nave innocents. Such quaintly charming habits of the

jungle. Screaming at

trees, indeed. How primitive. Too bad thay don't have the advantages

of modern

technology and the scientific mind.

Me? I yell at my wife. And yell at the telephone and the lawn mower.

And yell at the TV

and the newspaper and my children. I've been known to shake my fist

and yell at the sky

at times.

Man next door yells at his car a lot. And this summer I heard him

yell at a stepladder for

most of an afternoon. We modern, urban, educated folks yell at

traffic and umpires and

bills and banks and machines--especially machines. Machines and

relatives get most of

the yelling.

Don't know what good it does. Machines and things just sit there.

Even kicking doesn't

always help. As for people, well, the Solomon Islanders may have a

point. Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them.

Sticks and stones may break our bones,

but words will break our hearts....

 

 

Robert Fulghum

" All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten "