If Ripley were to have a contest for who in the world is wrong most of the time, I am confident I would be one of the finalists. I am living proof that somebody with a Harvard education can be wrong more often than not. I know you, my loyal reader, think I must be exaggerating, but trust me on this one. My batting average is simply atrocious.
Let me illustrate a case in point: As you already know, I write a weekly column for this very newspaper. I know you know this, or you wouldn’t be reading this in the first place. I write when the spirit moves me, and the spirit moves me so frequently that I often write more than one column per week. If you are asking yourself what I do with the excess inventory, then you are asking the right question. I, in my infinite wisdom, store each column in a separate document and place them all somewhere in the depths of my computer.
When I learned that our dear city is vulnerable to fires, I thought about what I ought to do to protect those columns that had not yet seen the light of day. I could put them into the cloud, but concluded that they would not be secure there (wherever there is), that somebody might pilfer one of my gems and publish it to win a Pulitzer. Then, I thought I might email each of them to myself, thereby assuring them a secure place in literary history. Of course, I did not put them in the cloud because my brain is in the cloud, and I did not email those columns to myself because I was too lazy.
The brilliant man that I am figured out that since traditionally fires did not impact lower Kanan Dume Road, since I had fire hydrants behind and near the front of my home, since my home was situated close to a fire house, there was no need to take any steps to protect my work product. In any case, I had an evacuation plan, and at the first sign of fire off I would be computer in hand. Well, as fate would have it, I was on the East Coast when the fire struck, and my computer and with it my 20-or-so columns went up in smoke.
I am so sorry that the residents of Malibu might very well miss such masterpieces as “Fiddle/Fettle,” “Dying With Your Boots On” and “Did I Shower?” I am trying to resurrect these works of art in my mind, but as I just demonstrated, my mind can use some substantial improvement.