Senior disobedience

July 12: Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817. He wrote in Walden:

"I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors."

Sully’s mom had filled a suitcase with letters from coaches, most of whom wrote multiple times, some of them more than once a week, and a couple of them more than once in a day. Sully was amused by all of them, by the obsequiousness and the wheedling couched in formal address. Grown men ought to know better, he thought.  --  Chapter 28, The Misforgotten.