Sometimes I'm Wr---, uh, Not Right

Believe It or Not

I have been going through quite a period of intense introspection lately, and I’ve decided it is time for me to admit something to everyone:

Sometimes I’m wr———, dang, let me try that again.

Sometimes I’m wr———, wow this is way harder than I thought it would be, but I know I can do it.

Sometimes I’m wr———, uh, not right.

Okay, all kidding aside, I know that sometimes I’m wr———ong. Yes, sometimes I’m wrong, (I knew I could do it.)

In my quest for perfection, sometimes I fail. Just like every other human, I make mistakes. There are so many of these instances from which to choose, however, I’ll present just a few examples I feel comfortable sharing with the world.

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Politics.

I suppose when most folks consider their political views, they believe they’re on the side of what’s right. I’m no different. For all my adult life, I’ve been politically liberal, and I do not see that ever changing.

I believe my politics are correct, but sometimes I choose the wrong messengers. Like Gary Hart and John Edwards.

Senator Gary Hart of Colorado ran for president in ’84 and ’88, and I liked a lot of what he was saying at the time. To me, his positions on the issues of the day were close to mine, and were based on a sense of what was right and what was wrong, and not on what was politically expedient. That enlightened perspective appealed to me very much.

However, Gary Hart’s sense of right and wrong was not as well-developed as I had thought. He had to drop out of the race when the press caught him cavorting with a young woman who was not his wife. His candidacy could not withstand the ensuing political firestorm. Back then, being exposed as a philandering liar was a career killer for anyone seeking public office. How quaint.

I made a similar character misjudgment a couple of decades later. In 2004, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina ran for president, losing to John Kerry, who then picked Edwards to be his running mate. They lost to George W, but I thought Edwards was presidential material. Edwards ran again in 2008 and lost to Barack Obama.

In the early days of that campaign, I supported Edwards until it became known he was a philandering pig, too, fathering a child with a campaign worker while pretending to be a fine, upstanding family man. His life as an elected official went down the drain. I liked his positions on the issues, but I was fooled again by a candidate of questionable personal character.

I am not saying I expect political candidates to be without fault, but they do have to meet at least a minimal standard of honesty and decency. I cannot stand cheaters and liars. But, look at the way America is now. To a sizable group of the current electorate, cheating and lying and being a scumbag do not matter.

I was wrong about Gary Hart and John Edwards, but their escapades would hardly be noticeable today. We now have a pathological habitual liar, sex offender president who has cheated on all three of his wives, and has been convicted of 34 felonies, and who has been found guilty of sexual assault in a civil court.

The Criminal-in-Chief makes Gary Hart and John Edwards look like candidates for sainthood.

John Edwards and Gary Hart. They had me fooled.

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Corvette Is a French Word Meaning “Bad Investment”.

People who have been reading The Storm. By Norm for a while might remember that my wife and I used to own an ’81 Corvette. We sold it at a loss to keep from losing more money on it.

I remember very clearly when I came down with a case of Corvette fever. We were on an Amtrak train that wasn’t moving. It was my first big train trip and it was kind of fun, I guess, but I was anxious to get home. And we weren’t moving.

To keep from going stir crazy, I started looking at cars on my phone. I have always had an affinity for muscle cars, so I got on Craigslist to pass the time by admiring all that fantastic American muscle. I liked seeing the beautiful works of vehicular art that were for sale all over the country.

It was not a lifelong dream of mine to own a Corvette. I liked them all right, but I liked a lot of cars from the muscle car era. However, as I scrolled through the car ads on Craigslist, the 3rd generation Corvettes, which encompassed the model years ’68 to ’82, and are known as C3s, began to call out to me.

After we got home, for the next several weeks I looked at the C3 Corvettes online and gradually reached the point that I thought that we could actually buy one. I convinced myself that we could get a reasonably priced Corvette that maybe needed a little fixing up and then we could have lots of fun out on the open road, tooling around in a hot-looking car. So we bought a Corvette.

My wife and I talked it over and we made a joint decision to do this, but I certainly was the force behind it. That it didn’t work out the way I thought it would, is an understatement, and that is on me. I was wrong about so much. I vastly underestimated the cost of fixing up an ’81 Corvette. And I vastly overestimated the demand for a partially fixed up ’81 Corvette.

The car we ended up buying needed lots more work for it to be how we really wanted it to be. And, I had always thought if we got to the point where it was costing us too much and we had to sell, well, we could at least sell it for what we put into it, so we wouldn’t lose anything on the deal.

I was way wrong about that, and everything else pertaining to the Corvette.

It was an expensive lesson to learn.

We had such high hopes for this car. The stress it caused far outweighed the fun factor.

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The Elite Eight is Great.

In this next story, not only was I wrong, as an added bonus, I was stupid, too. And, it all happened because I am an old dinosaur.

My wife and I went out to breakfast with her brother and his wife one morning a couple of months ago, and the conversation turned to the upcoming NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament games. My wife mentioned something about the Elite Eight and I stupidly said the Elite Eight is not a real thing, and nobody cares about it, and how it’s just an informal cutesy nickname for the intermediate step between the round of 16 and the Final Four.

The reason I said all of that stuff is because I am old enough to remember when the Elite Eight really wasn’t anything that was talked about or promoted. On the first weekend of the tournament, 64 teams were whittled down to 16, but no one made a big deal when the teams were reduced by half to 32. And the next weekend, the 16 teams were reduced to 4, and in the olden days, no one thought much about it when there were 8 teams left.

So, I had it in my fossilized brain that the Elite Eight really wasn’t a big deal. But, you tune in to a game and the announcers are talking about it constantly - it’s Elite Eight this and Elite Eight that, and it is printed on the court as part of the tournament logo, and apparently some teams hang banners in their home arenas, commemorating appearances in the Elite Eight. It really is important aspect of the tournament. Contrary to what I blathered on about at breakfast.

So, I’d like to take this opportunity to acknowledge to my wife, my brother-in-law and my sister-in-law that I was wrong about what I said. The Elite Eight is an important milestone in the tournament, and I wish I had kept my gaping trap shut about it.

Yep, the Elite Eight is a thing.

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In Conclusion.

There are so many more times I have been . . . not right. But, I think I have shared enough for now. It’s funny that even with all my vast experience with this subject, I am still surprised when I realize I’ve been incorrect about something. I mean, heck, I’ve had so much practice at goofing up, I should be used to it.

I’d like to say I’ll do better, but it would be, uh, wrong of me to make a promise I may not be able to keep.

Sometimes, I just want to hide.

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