Live, learn

Early in my career at the newspaper, I was the sports copy editor for the afternoon paper. I laid out the pages, selected and edited the stories, wrote the headlines and when that was done helped with the rest of the paper.

One of my duties was to edit the copy of the legendary Putt Powell. Putt was an award-winning columnist. People called him the dean of sports journalists. Putt's column sold newspapers, lots of newspapers.

I was female and young.

One unfortunate day, I found an error in his column. I took it to him and told him it was Tulsa Hurricane not Hurricanes as he had written. He read me the riot act, or so it seemed to me at the time. I returned to my chair on the copy desk like a scolded Lab puppy.

Putt and I did not become buddies over the years, but he did listen to me when I had a question about his column. I, in turn, learned that the dean of sports journalists knew his stuff.

Putt wrote two columns. One for the morning paper, which was his longer, more detailed column. For the afternoon paper, he wrote a column called Short Putts.

I am going to do a "Short Putts"-type blog entry one of these days. One sentence, one topic. Harder than you might think.

I have learned to see right through suckups. Maybe because I was such a victim of them for so long. Or maybe I have become more suspicious in my old age. Whatever. I have little patience with them.

We all do what we have to do to live with ourselves. Whether it is rationalizing why something happened the way it did, or offering excuses for others. I know what you told me 26 hours before you died. That is what I will use as the standard. Others can think what they may. As much as we would like to, we cannot go back and change things. I am going to quit worrying about it.

Dude. Mon esprit partenaire.

I shot the mailman, but did not shoot his deputy.

Later.