No Foolin' -Another List 4/1/10

Five Things I Used to Believe:

1. That I could run twenty miles, even if I had a cold and allergies. I made it about 3.5, before turning around today. My chest hurt so badly, I thought an alien baby was going to burst forth from it.

2. That the meanings of "cheap" and "expensive" were reversed. Given my credit score and my retirement fund, I'd say this one hung on well into adulthood.

3. That if I just got close enough to the TV screen, I could see things that weren't really visible. I remember as a five year-old, crawling all the way up, so that I could see what was under Tina Turner's fringe dress as she and The Ikettes did "Proud Mary" on the Mike Douglas Show. As an older man, I can say I am grateful that, even with Hi-Def TV, we cannot see what's under Betty White's dress.

4. That I would one day be a wide receiver for the Chiefs. There may have been a time in NFL history-say, during the Great Depression-when people ate once a month, that 150-pounders ran amok on the gridiron, and were not flattened into something that would fit into a standard business envelope. But the end of the Great Depression, selective breeding, free agency, steroids, and discrimination against skinny people, have all made sure that it will never come again.

5. That the sidewalk was the only thing separating us from oblivion. I really thought there was nothing underneath it. Plus, I had seen some movie in which luckless cave explorers fell into a bottomless pit. Maybe I thought they just fell all the way through Earth, and wound up on Pluto. (Which I used to believe was a planet.) Now I know there are no bottomless pits. Except for Rush Limbaugh.

I also used to believe in the Easter Bunny, Kirby Puckett, a place called Hope, and the infallibility of R.E.M.

Thanks for reading.