Say Nothing - Student

By now you know I have been the recipient of a lot of advice that has ruined my life. The one I speak of today, though, was possibly good advice which I misunderstood rather badly and, however did you guess, ruined my life as a consequence. They told me "When you have nothing to say, say nothing." Maybe, knowing me, they should have told me the thing in full. If they had, I may have fared much better. They SHOULD have told me, "Say nothing, but say it in as many words as possible." There is this guy I know, whose identity I shall not disclose except to say that when my parents looked into the mirror they saw his parents. HE understood the advice in full and applied it from school. There was this time when, in a school test there was a 5 mark question asking him to write a few words about human civilization. All of us know that no adult really knows what a civilized human is really, so just imagine asking a school kid to talk about a vaster concept called human civilization. Obviously, he knew nothing but what did he say? Human civilization is that my teachers teach me well, I study well, I write the exam well but I don't get good marks. So, my father beats me, my mother beats me and the human civilization.
It's quite likely that his teacher was either flattered by the knowledge that he thought he was being taught well; or was so moved by the sorry plight of the poor boy studying well, writing his exam well and still not getting good marks; or was terrified by the idea of giving him bad marks causing his father and mother to beat up the whole human civilization (once they determined what it was and found it, if indeed it existed anywhere). Net result was that he ended up getting 3.5 marks out of 5 for saying nothing relevant in a lot of words. Or, indeed, the time when he was asked to write five sentences about cows in Hindi. (Puhleeze! This was in the seventies, so none of your holy cow reactions are relevant here.) Armed only with the knowledge that a cow was an animal and not a plant, he sallied forth. Gai ek animal hai; Gai do animal hai; Gai teen animal hai; Gai chaar animal hai; Gai paanch animal hai
Totally impressed by the fact that he knew his numbers from one to five in Hindi, the teacher granted him 4.5 marks out of 5, the half mark possibly deducted for using 'animal'. Teachers, those days! They were very unforgiving of Engdi - the mirror image of Hinglish! Me - in both cases, I'd have left a blank space in the answer sheet, sticking very closely to my limited understanding of 'Say nothing' , I'd have got bad marks, and my father and mother would have beat me and, possibly, the human civilization as well!