I don't know what I'm doing wrong here. Other columnists get all
sorts of email and telephone calls filled with vitriol, and
occasionally even death threats. I haven't even received a good
insult. This makes me feel like I'm failing to affect my audience.
Or even attract an audience.
I mean come on - Mike Pearson writes a column in the
Rocky mountain News and says something funny about
wrestling with his cat (I forget just what he said, but it was
obvious to anyone with half a brain and a quarter of a sense of
humor that he was joking) - and people were about to drag him out
in the street, tar and feather him, and ride him out on the
proverbial rail! Or ask Bill Johnson, also of the
Rocky Mountain News what happened when he refered to
Pittsburg as "one butt-ugly town". The just about shiskabobbed him
and roasted him on a spit! What am I doing wrong?
Maybe I'm not insulting the right people. Let's see, I proposed
making it illegal to ride bikes on roads with less than three feet
wide paved shoulders, and called the Girl Scouts evil. If not a
pack of infuriated lycra-loonies after me, you'd think I'd have at
least one Den Mother coming after me in defense of her little
leprechans...
I also made fun of teenage daughters. I can't help it, they're
all so melodramatic at that age - it's funny! Since virtually every
teenage girl out there is somebodies' daughter, I can only conclude
that no teenage girls read that column.
Okay, let's add to that. If teenage daughters are funny, teenage
sons are downright hysterical! Not only are they also very
melodramatic, but they're so angst-ridden and testosterone-loaded
that they're an absolute riot! If you're starting to pass them up
they suddenly hit the gas because being passed threatens their
frail emerging manhood. They're the ones riding your butt and
weaving in and out of traffic so they can be one carlength ahead of
you at the next stoplight.
When it comes to tailgating, though, young women tend to be the
worst. I don't know why. Older women tend to be bad as well. I
think women in general must be more impatient when they're trying
to drive somewhere.
Truely frightening driving, however, seems to be the domain of
old men wearing hats. I don't know why wearing a hat effects their
driving the way it does, but boy it does! Watch out for them.
They're the ones doing 20 mph under in the left lane, straddling
over both the white line and the double yellow, and doing truly
bizzare and seemingly pointless driving manuevers.
Okay, so now I've added teenage boys, young women, older women,
and old men with hats to my pick-on list. We'll see what happens.
Maybe I'll get a flood of insults and death threats so I can write
about it.
Oh, the picture up top? That's my house, with the new roof I
just put on last winter. The dormer is a small but dramatic change
from what I had. I just put it up there so you all had a little
something besides text to look at. See you next week, when I'll
probably be picking on jazz enthusiasts and dog-lovers or
something...