[Paul Lakin remembers:]
I remember my first grade teacher saying "actions speak louder than words" to scold us for being too loud, with the idea that if we wanted to speak *really* loudly we'd do something other than yelling. She also said it to scold us for hitting, with, I guess now, the idea that hitting was speaking too loudly.
These two opposite, wrong uses of the proverb were confusing as fuck, and probably would be to any six year old who will from time to time very much want both to hit and to speak loudly. They also delayed several years my understanding what it really does mean.
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