Nov 28, 2016 5 min read

A while back I was in my local “Mom and Pop’s” store contributing to my other 401K (the Pennsylvania Lottery/Powerball) and some big dude rolled up on me and said, “What’s your name?

Are you the guy that writes those articles in the paper?” I shifted my weight to my right foot (farthest from him), looked at his Adam’s apple and thought, “First punch, spin, (to increase my momentum) then my left elbow to the left side of his head.”

I said, “Yeah, I’m John Lucas” and expected all hell to break loose. He said, “I just want to tell you that was a really good article you wrote about…” The vision of two big dudes fighting and knocking over the shelves where they put the bread vanished.

What a relief! I didn’t want to get banned from my local “Mom and Pop’s” store where I ritualistically (but unsuccessfully) buy my lottery tickets. I didn’t want to hurt this guy and get charged with assault, but I wasn’t going to be assaulted and hurt. Old people heal slower and if it got ugly, he’d be the one healing slowly. I subscribe to the Coast Guard motto: “Semper Paratus” (always prepared).

However, nobody’s always prepared and that’s why the unexpected happens. The only thing we can do is try to be prepared for everything, but who knows what everything is? All we can do is the best we can.

That’s why you guys read my stuff. You might not agree with me, but you know whatever I write is the best that I could come up with at that particular point in time. I don’t cheat, or try to sound smarter than I am, but I haven’t read anything written by anybody on pages A4 and A5 who’s smarter (or wittier) than me. Have you? See what I mean?

We’ve developed this relationship. I’m that cranky old uncle that always says something caustic at the dinner table on Thanksgiving. There’s a particular way to do this, and I’m teaching you how it’s done.

Pages A4 and A5 require a “back and forth.” If that doesn’t happen, then this “stuff” is pointless. These are the pages reserved for dialectics. What difference does it make if the stuff we write is printed? It only matters if the stuff we write is read and at least, semi-understood.

Some of us are so predictable that after you read one of “their” pieces, there’s no need to ever read another. I could name them, but we all know who they are.

Heck, the Herald-Standard even imports some. Remember Jennifer Rubens of the Washington Post? She haunted pages A4 and A5 ad nauseam and sometimes twice on the same day.

Recently she wrote a piece attacking Bill O’Reilly of “The O’Reilly Factor.” He invited her to appear on his show and when she did, he handed her, her “butt,” neatly wrapped with a bow. The columnist was just so “unprepared” that she sounded even more clueless than she does in the stuff she writes. Someone should tell her what “Semper Paratus” means.

I do find it kind of offensive that the powers that be have to import the clueless, like John L. Micek from Harrisburg. His glasses may make him look smart, but his rhetoric proves that he’s not. Remember his piece headlined “You’re not going to be killed by a refugee?” What’s he gonna do when someone is killed by one? Write the one word column “Oops?”

I’m trying to come up with a cause of action to sue him if and when it does happen. Oh, I don’t expect any windfall settlement from an opinion columnist, but I would appreciate it if he would stop writing so foolishly, attempting to infect the rest of us with his “dumbness disease.”

For those of you who said: Vanderbilt, show us where this “old hippie” is fundamentally wrong. The “talkin’ part” might seem to be the easiest part, but believe this: “It isn’t as easy as I make it out to be.” To all my humbled critics, “ain’t that right?”

I suppose that there are some that might rewrite stuff they found on the Internet (there’s a word for that, too), but I wouldn’t know for sure. To date, I have refused to go “on line.” This makes those important phone calls I get from “Window Support” so hilarious. Do you get calls from someone who sounds like he lives in Calcutta, but says his name is “Dave?” He tells you someone is trying to break into your computer (him) and steal all your information? He’s “Window Support” and will prevent it, by telling you to turn on your computer and do this, or that.

I play along with the crook for a while, then hit him with “Hey you piece of ‘stuff.’ I don’t even have the Internet.” Of course I make a few nasty remarks about his mother that the Herald-Standard would never print. Heck, I don’t even have to hang up on him. The insulted crook gets so upset, he hangs up on me. Now that’s entertainment without the risk of knocking over the shelves where they keep the bread at the Tri-Town Market.

“Semper Paratus!”

John Lucas

Vanderbilt