Three Days of Mute… guest starring Mad cartoonist Sergio Aragones!!

February 21, 2026

Sergio Aragones was a cartoonist for Mad Magazine from the 1960s-1970s. Most of his sketches had no word balloons and no captions.

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A few weeks ago, I decided to take Three Days of Mute because sometimes I just don’t feel like talking.

I know talking should be easy. All a person has to do is open his/her mouth and let the words flow out. For me, it’s more difficult. My brain wants to analyze every word I say before I say it. Sometimes my brain mixes up two words that I’m thinking about using, and I come up with a new mixed up word. I’m pretty sure I know why I’m like this. If I said the wrong thing when I was growing up, I often faced some steep consequences, and I’ve never gotten over the habit of carefully parsing my words.

Because of this, I don’t like to talk, at least not until I know somebody really well. When I’m comfortable, I can speak feely and I don’t mind (and sometimes the person I’m comfortable with regrets it), but, otherwise, talking is a lot of mental/physical work. I avoid it if I can. And for three days, I went on Full Mute. And if I were going to go Full Mute, what better cartoons to read than those of Sergio Aragones?

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Sergio Aragones could do more with a wordless 1-3 panel strip than most cartoonists do with a full page of pictures and dialogue.

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Going on Mute had been easy for three days a week earlier when a rare winter freeze had left a layer of ice around my home, and I simply never went outside those three days, except to stand on a couple dry spots and breath the cold air. During that time, I didn’t see anybody. I didn’t talk to anyone on the phone either. All my communication was through text and email. At the end of day three, the temperature had warmed, the ice had started to melt, and I realized that it had been nice to have no physically verbal social interactions for three days.

I thought, what if I could do the same thing while I was out in the general public? What if I could go mute for another three days while interacting with the general public?

Staying at home just to maintain silence would be cheating, I thought. Completing the Three days of Mute challenge required me to enter the world again. First would be my daily walk. Since ice was melting, my normal walk through the hills/forests would be muddy or slippery, so I stuck with the easier, more populated sidewalk paths. Even there, the walks at the parks are usually quiet.

In case you haven’t noticed, the pictures don’t match up with my story.

Most men walking by themselves keep to themselves or wear headphones. The women either talk really loudly in pairs or talk really loudly on the phone by themselves or talk really loudly with the men they’re with or they listen to music/podcasts really loudly. I don’t see many quiet women at the park. Even so, you never know when one of them is going to make eye contact and say something like “Good morning” or even a simple “Hello.” I didn’t want to be rude and snub anybody, even those who are talking loudly. I might see them again after the Three Days of Mute.

On a normal day, I would greet everybody with a “Good morning!” or “How’s it going?” On the Three Days of Mute, they would just get the nod of acknowledgement. I like the nod. It’s not rude. It acknowledges that I’m aware of the other person’s presence. Best yet, I don’t have to say anything. Everybody understands the nod. Youngsters. Old farts. Everybody. If somebody refuses to acknowledge the nod, that’s the fault of the person refusing the acknowledgement, but it’s also not worth caring about. So for the next three days, I would do a lot of nodding at the park. Or staring at the ground. Or staring at the sky.

So Day One at the park went smoothly. Little to no eye contact. An occasional nod. Two verbal greetings from other walkers where I simply smiled, nodded, and maybe added a quick wave. Everything was polite and easy.

This cartoon might seem a bit sexist, but this kind of reaction can go both ways.

The grocery store later that day was my next challenge. It was somewhat crowded with a various people in various stages of speed and spacial awareness. Even when I’m not on Mute, I try to keep out of everybody’s way when I shop. I stay on the side of the item I’m looking for. I move before I can be in another shopper’s way. I try to avoid conversation even on normal days. Something as simple as an ‘Excuse me” is too much. Despite my efforts, though, something went wrong.

“Excuse me, sir. Sir!” A young lady (she was younger than me anyway) with a nice smile and a soft voice was pointing to a can at the top shelf. “Can you please reach that for me?”

I’m at the age now where everybody calls me sir. I’m used to it now. I’m also used to random women at the grocery store asking me to reach stuff for them. Sometimes I offer, especially if I see a woman trying to climb a shelf to snatch an out-of-reach jar/can. I know what can happen with grocery store shelves. I’ve seen some disasters in my time.

Even though this lady had a nice smile and a soft voice, I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to reach because ‘that’ was a vague word and there were a lot of items to choose from on the top shelf. Normally, I could have asked, but I couldn’t without going off Mute. Instead, I pointed at a random can.

“To the right,” she said.

I pointed to the next can.

“Other way,” she said. I gave her the correct item and pointed at the can behind it.

“That’s all,” she said. I gave her a thumbs up and began walking off.

“Isn’t that your cart?” she said.

I turned around, smiled, gave her two thumbs up, returned to my cart, and we went our separate ways, never to see each other again (unless I see her next week).

I figured the library on Day Two would be easy, but I forgot that my library has a couple talkative employees. In the old days of Silence Is Golden, talkative librarians would be unemployed librarians, but that’s not how things work now. The local library now seems more like a community center for kids, especially pre-elementary, that happens to have a section of books in the back and computers to the side. That’s probably a more relevant function for today than just being a building with books, but it means that libraries are no longer quiet. Even so, I still enjoy browsing for current nonfiction books that will probably be irrelevant in five years, and once I found a couple, I chose the chattiest librarian. If my daily interactions were to be limited, I might as well challenge myself.

I gave her my two books.

“Perfect,” she said.

I gave her my card.

“Perfect,” she said.

She gave me my card. Everything was going perfectly, even according to the librarian.

“Does the ‘N’ stand for Nebraska?” she asked, pointing to the giant “N” on my black sweatshirt.

Aaaarrrgh! On most days, I’d say the letter stands for ‘knowledge’,” but I resisted. I had a higher goal. I just flashed her a smile, gave her a thumbs up, and went on my way. It was an old Creighton University joke anyway; it was probably never funny.

Back in the 1960s, the average citizen still respected members of law enforcement. Elephants, however, have always been disrespectful.

Day Three was the United States Post Office. The post office would be easy, I thought, because it’s a routine where the clerk says the same thing to every customer: Press ‘continue,’ press ‘no,’ Check the address, how do you want your receipt? All I’d have to do is press buttons. The clerks have to repeat themselves so frequently throughout each shift that they’re probably grateful for customers who know what they’re doing and don’t say anything. But I’d forgotten about the line. When there’s a line, you never know what can happen.

This was a typical long mid-afternoon post office line, of course. A couple people complained about how long the clerks were taking. One guy on his phone whined that he had been standing in line for twenty minutes (it had been six). One guy muttered that there should be more than two clerks. One guy said it was Trump’s fault (nobody took the bait). One guy tried to be funny and laughed at his own joke (I sympathized with the intent but didn’t crack a smile).

And then when it was my turn, a newcomer to the line made her move and cut to the front.

You see, before the internet, there were these booklets called magazines, and some of these magazines had a three-fold page in the middle with a… uh, never mind. It was nothing compared to what’s on the internet today.

She had a pile of four boxes cradled precariously in her arms, and she had just bypassed the rest of us to stand to the right of my position at the front. She looked at me and stated in a tone without apology, “I’m in a hurry.”

If I had been alone in the line, I wouldn’t have cared. I’m rarely in a hurry anymore, and I don’t mind if I can make somebody’s day a little easier. But there were (maybe) ten people behind me, most of whom I assumed were just as much in a hurry as she was, so I didn’t have the authority to make that kind of decision. Plus, I didn’t have time to poll everybody when there was a postal clerk waiting. This is why I don’t like to talk. All of these thoughts jammed themselves into my brain in an instant, and if I had tried to speak, the words would have gotten in each other’s way.

The cutter mistook my hesitation for consent and started to move forward. I couldn’t talk to her. I was on Day Three of Mute. So I went to my last resort. I snapped my fingers. Twice. And pointed to the back of the line.

“You snapped your fingers at me?” She seemed pissed, but at least she had stopped.

I repointed my finger to the back of the line. I heard a few murmurs of agreement behind me.

“Rude,” she said, and she made a squinchy face at me, but she walked herself to the back of the line. And she dropped her boxes on the way.

Maybe I had been rude. But sometimes a nonverbal ‘no’ is all an unreasonable person deserves.

You see, before the gender wars, men and women used to get married, and there was this thing for women called bridal shops. The woman getting married was the bride, and….

At the end of Day Three on Mute, I congratulated myself and thought that someday I might go full mute again. I couldn’t do this all the time, though. If I did, I’d be at risk of turning into a mime, and mimes are the worst. Youngsters today might think clowns are bad, but mimes are infinitely worse. Mimes are so bad that even Stephen King refuses to write books about them. I’d rather substitute teach than become a mime. If I ever decide to take a few Days on Mute in the future, I’ll be avoiding speech only because it’s inconvenient for me, but I won’t inconvenience anybody else by becoming a mime.

Three Days of Mute isn’t for everybody. It was easy for me because I’m just kind of hanging out right now and can unfairly limit my interactions. If I got too close to actually speaking to somebody, I could call it a day and stay home. When I was teaching, though, there was no way I could go on Full Mute. I used a lot of non-verbals back in my teaching days, especially during hallway duty, but going Full Mute would have been a disaster. I tried going semi-mute a couple times when I was working at a grocery store for a while, but pointing to items that were at the other side of the store wasn’t effective. The customers would always ask follow up questions like “Who’s your manager?” and “Where does this store find these weirdos?”

Yes, the toll was only 25 cents, but that was worth $200 in today’s currency.

The next morning was day one of going back to normal, and I was fully refreshed and ready for a social interaction. When I drove to the nature trail and stepped out of my car, I went out of my way to greet the first person I saw, a graying fellow my age with a baseball cap, hooded sweatshirt, and shorts. Hey, that was my style of outfit too.

“Good morning!” I said heartily. My voice was clear and cheerful. What a great day!

The guy glanced at me with an upturned nose of disgust and moved on. I had been snubbed. Or maybe he just was on Full Mute for the day.