If you were born the week I first wrote a column for this
newspaper, statistically you are by today likely to: (1) have
graduated from high school, attended 1.3 semesters of college
majoring in
”
undecided
”
and be eligible to vote but historically not greatly tempted to
do so; (2) be two-thirds married but within months of contemplating
divorce and be the proud but largely unprepared parent of
eight-tenths of a child; and (3) be holding down 87 percent of a
job, living 93 percent in a rented home, 5 percent with your
parents and 2 percent in your car
If you were born the week I first wrote a column for this newspaper, statistically you are by today likely to: (1) have graduated from high school, attended 1.3 semesters of college majoring in “undecided” and be eligible to vote but historically not greatly tempted to do so; (2) be two-thirds married but within months of contemplating divorce and be the proud but largely unprepared parent of eight-tenths of a child; and (3) be holding down 87 percent of a job, living 93 percent in a rented home, 5 percent with your parents and 2 percent in your car.
During that generation I have been sharing with my readers the way the world looks from my particular perch. A number of years ago my editor called me to say that the paper was redoing my “slug,” which is the little description of the author that appears at the bottom of every column, and they wanted it to say more than “… an attorney in Morgan Hill”; could I offer a word to go ahead of “attorney”? After only a second’s thought I said “Use ‘eccentric,’ ” which I thought concisely expressed my literary self-image, and darned if they didn’t accommodate me and use the word. I appreciated that.
“Eccentric” literally means “off-center,” and that’s what I have tried to be in what by now amounts to more than 800 columns. I want to find the doesn’t-quite-make-sense in the world around me, to offer a different take on the news or the local scene. My attitude has been, if you want to follow me bring your 4-wheel drive because I’m going off-road.
Trouble is, it’s hard to remain off-center when the center itself keeps wandering deeper into the forest. Scenarios which Monty Python would have hesitated to envision are now on the television every night as news. The lines between fact and fiction, politics and entertainment, reality and special effects are being erased at such a dizzying clip that trying to remain weirder than average is a full-time job. It no longer takes a humor column to point out what’s funny about the news – the news is its own joke.
I have tried most weeks to give people a reason to laugh, or at least smile if only for a moment. I have left it to others to report facts, to solemnly offer insight on the great issues of the day, and to tell people how to think. I would rather make fun of Nexium commercials or low-carb diets. Very little said in a newspaper by anybody is ever memorable; it’s interesting today, fishwrap tomorrow. If I contributed some immediately-forgotten chuckles to my readers over the years I met my goal.
So class, now that we’ve all gotten comfortable with the concept of “eccentric”, let’s try a new word: “hiatus.” A hiatus is a tropical plant with large, colorful blossoms and an exotic fragrance that … no, wait, just kidding. Actually, hiatus is Mitchell not writing a regular column for a spell of indeterminate duration while you, the paper, and I see how things go. I’m not physically going anywhere, and I plan to keep my sensitivity to all things ridiculous in good working order, so stay alert. Moon, tides, and general circumstances permitting, I might be found attempting to entice the language to get up and dance for your amusement some other time.
