Dalton Roberts: Remembering past mistakes

photo Dalton Roberts

If you want to get spanked until your nose bleeds, just write a column about some sports issues of the day and make a mistake. The sports fanatics will swarm you like chickens on a junebug. You'll go back to writing about politics and other noncontroversial topics.

In a recent column about Peyton Manning, I stroked him for not coming to play with our Tennessee Titans and warned him that someday when the Titans and Broncos (Peyton chose to sign with them) are playing in the Super Bowl, I would root for the Titans. I am certain it made him tremble to know I will be rooting against him since everyone knows what a massive following I have among sports maniacs.

Right away, those maniacs set in on me for making a "sports error." They informed me in very certain terms that the Titans and Broncos will never be in the Super Bowl. You see, the Super Bowl is between the champions of the AFC (American Football Conference) and the NFC (National Football Conference). And both the Titans and Broncos are in the AFC!

So you didn't know that either? You imbecile! You blithering idiot! How dare you write a column with such a blatant sports error in it! In next week's column, you had better print a correction, or I will come over to downtown Watering Trough and stomp a mud hole in your posterior and challenge you to a duel! It's time duels were reinstated anyway to thin the morons in the population.

As I read my mail, I had flashbacks about my years in politics. Like the time the sheriff checked me into the Read House and outfitted me with a bulletproof vest until they could find the man who had threatened to kill me. Or the time a man called

and said, "I had you in the scope of my rifle this morning as you walked from your car to your office." A few days later he called and said, "I have decided to shoot you when you walk from your home to your car in the morning."

While I am on this topic of public safety, let me say that anyone who thinks those silly checkpoints in public buildings would keep a half-intelligent, determined person from hurting someone are hurting their own brain by feeding it such silly pablum. All it does is create aggravation and hassle for the citizens needing to go there to transact business. The beautiful courts building has a grand Market Street entrance, but you cannot use it. Everyone must walk to the rear checkpoint, take off their belts and watches and go through a metal detector. Oh, such a comfort! Aren't we glad that all maniacs are dumb.

Al Harvey, the bard of Bakewell Mountain, says, "There are 47 different kinds of tics and spasms." He is so right. And there are 47 different kinds of homicidal maniacs -- all the way from spree killers to serial killers who take great pride in their work and will go to any lengths to do it.

Fortunately, our sports maniacs are just average guys with overactive adrenal glands. But when they are flashed up on TV all painted up and throwing each other up in the air, I often think, "Thank God they don't have guns right now when they are fully worked up."

Email Dalton Roberts at DownhomeP@aol.com.

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