A fool's lips bring him strife, and his mouth invites a beating.  A fool's mouth is his undoing, and his lips are a snare to his soul (Proverbs 18:6-7).

Mike "Mouth" McMillan is a pretty decent guy... as long as he keeps his mouth shut.  Unfortunately, this doesn't happen very often.  When we were kids, he wouldn't cow to the class bullies and would freely speak his mind -- and we all admired that about him, but it never really accomplished much in the way of dealing with the actual bullying problem; it only got him a lot of cuts, scrapes, and bruises.  In high school football, he started more than his fair share of brawls on the football fields and basketball courts -- but again, those of us who would consider ourselves his friends didn't mind that so much; trash-talking happens in the heat of competition, and all that anger and adrenaline often worked in our teams' favor.  Then there was all the stuff that happened in class.  In these situations, it wasn't so great to be a friend of Mouth McMillan -- because a lot of times, the person he was talking to would get in trouble just as much as Mouth himself.  He would also mouth off to the teachers and even to the principal on occasion, which really didn't go over well with my parents when I was implicated as a conspirator.  A couple of times, Mouth got himself suspended, and I started to feel a little bit sorry for him.

After high school graduation, it got worse.  Mouth had a tough time holding down a decent job.  He'd also be mouthing off to co-workers or supervisors -- and sooner or later, he'd end up getting himself fired.  I told him and told him that he was setting himself up for a lifetime of trouble; but he just couldn't shut up.  I still felt kind of bad for the guy, but as long as he wasn't messing with my life I could still be a friend to him.

But then he shot his mouth off again... this time at my Lisa.  Right to her face, right while I was standing there next to her.  He was laughing and yapping about the way that her voice sounds.  I told him to watch it.  He said he was just joking.  But then he kept on teasing Lisa and bothering her.  I told him to shut up.  But he just kept mouthing off, and I could see that Lisa was about to cry.  So when he finally started making wise-cracks about her outfit, I punched him.  I punched him hard, with every bit of strength that I had in my angry right fist.  I punched him right on the jaw with a perfect hit that put him straight on the floor.  After a stunned moment of silence, he started moaning and rolling around on the ground with his hands to his face.  My fist hurt pretty bad, but Mouth McMillan definitely got the worst of it.  After letting him roll around in his agony for a few moments, I could tell that he was hurt real bad and that we were going to have to do something about it.  So I told Lisa to get me a bag of ice for my knuckles, while I got the car so I could take Mouth to the hospital.  It seemed like the only decent thing to do, as a friend, as the guy who knocked him down.

So we drove to the hospital in perfect silence.  When we got to the emergency room, the doctors and nurses took care of him right away.  After some examinations and X-rays and waiting, it turned out that his jaw was broken pretty bad.  So they took him into surgery and patched things back together -- and now they say that he's going to be just fine.  I'm glad about that.  But I'm even more glad that part of Mouth's recovery process is that he's got to have his jaw wired shut for six weeks.  And I've got to tell you, I've never felt closer to the guy than I do right now.  I help him with his pureed meals and his medications because I'm a friend, and that's what friends do.  But the best times are when I can sit in a room with Mouth and watch a TV show or read a magazine article or tell him about something that happened at work... and he just sits there, all quiet, nodding watching with his eyes and nodding with his head and keeping his big fat mouth shut.