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Back in the mists of history —  about the fifth grade, I think it was — a teacher informed me that my mouth seemed to operate a bit too much ahead of my brain. Since fifth-grade teachers are prone to such Delphic utterances, I just nodded and said “Yes, ma’am,” as I always did, and continued on my way, without the slightest idea what she was going on about.

Time has not improved my mouth-brain coordination, but over the intervening decades I’ve begun to understand what she meant.

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