The 3 Levels of Wisdom

According to me

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” –Socrates

Nowadays I try to be a wise guy. Not the Mafia kind, you understand, but more of the venerable old guy kind. The kind children look up to and admire. It’s like my wife says, “It’s about damn time.”

I have five grandkids ranging in age from fifteen to three. I feel it’s my sacred and bounden duty to fill them with wisdom whether they like it or not.

The little kids (ages 3 & 4) are easy because they’ll believe anything. I’ve found that granddads remain cool and faultless for any kid up to the age of nine or ten. After that, the granddad’s grossness and embarrassment factors increase proportionally with every month’s advancement of the kid’s age, if you want to get mathematical about it.

But we have ways to get through to them, ways in which their parents can’t: through the magic of being old. For the most part, kids seem to like grandparents better than parents. Probably because we don’t yell at them as much, and we give them more ice cream and money. Still, freebies aside, they will ignore you if you don’t interact with them. That, too, is inversely proportional as they advance in age (more math, sorry). In fact, we can refer to these as Phil’s 1st and 2nd Laws of Child Communication.

I believe I read somewhere in the Grand Parents’ (hereafter referred to as GP) Bylaws, that each GP has to invest a minimum of one pearl of wisdom per month. This can be done for a single grandkid (GK) or in groups of no more than three. And even then, the age spread can’t be greater than five years.

It gets complicated. I don’t know who came up with these bylaws, but I suspect they go back thousands of years, possibly even to the Sumerians as passed down to them by the Anunnaki before they took off in their spaceships. (see Sitchin, Zacharia)

Anyway, I’ve come up with different levels of wisdom giving which I will wisely share here:

Wisdom Giving Level 1 — Pre-school to age 7

This is the easiest level. Kids this age are gullible. They don’t know wisdom from Elmo. They’ll buy into just about anything you say.

Level 1 examples:

· You know, kid, money is no object with Santa Claus. You should ask for the big stuff.

· You know, kid, money grows on trees. Tell your parents to tell the tooth fairy you expect five bucks for that tooth.

· You know, kid, you can’t have too much ice cream, no matter what your mother says.

Wisdom giving Level 2 — age 7.1 to 11

This level gets a little tougher because you’re starting to enter the pre-pubescent years at the upper end. This is when you will start to see the GK’s take you less seriously, even doubt your word. To quote that sage Elmer Fudd, “You have to be vewy, vewy cayeful.”

Level 2 Examples:

· Helping your gramp rake these leaves will get you a guaranteed spot in heaven. It’s in the Bible.

· There’s a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore looking stupid. (Used allegorically after a GK does a face-plant while skateboarding or some such.)

· If you keep rolling your eyes, they’ll stick that way or you’ll go blind or both.

Wisdom giving Level 3 — age 12 to 20

This is the most difficult level for obvious reasons: adolescence. These creatures don’t want to take in any wisdom because they already know everything, and you don’t. Your only hope is that sometime around age thirty they’ll realize you weren’t as stupid as you looked when you passed on pearls of wisdom.

Level 3 examples:

· There is a fine line between responding to everything I say with “whatever” and being a smart-ass. On second thought, no there isn’t.

· There ain’t no free lunch in life, so quit asking. Besides, you just ate two hours ago.

· You know, son. Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life. (borrowed from Dean Wormer — Animal House, 1978. This was great wisdom given to me when I was 20, although I wasn’t fat.)

Wisdom and youth are fleeting things, especially in my case. Part of the fun of being a GP is the pure joy you get from pranking the GK’s and passing it off as wisdom. I learned somewhere in my long and checkered past that a woman personifies Wisdom in most of the great philosophies and religions of the world. Now that makes total sense.

Thanks for stopping by for the read. I truly appreciate you, and I consider you wise for doing so.

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© 2020 by Phil Truman. All rights reserved.