Columns

There are places that are emblazoned into our hearts and souls as if seared there before birth, a match for us and our time that we would learn only through life’s tumultuous passage.

Home certainly is primary, the place where we planted our roots and grew among our nourishing family and friends, but there are others, unique plots on a map to which we are drawn and driven by strands of our DNA and the forces that propel us.

To some, the words “family feud” will bring to mind the old game show by that name, with Richard Dawson kissing all the female contestants.

For the more literary astute, perhaps the Montagues and the Capulets from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (or the more recent movie, Gnomeo and Juliet) came to mind. Still other’s thoughts may have gone to your latest holiday get-together.

An old colleague, basketball executive, author and many times Boston Marathoner Pat Williams, used to open speeches by saying:
“I’m going to speak first to those of you who are smokers, in as much as you have less time to live than the rest of us.”

And today I am addressing you smokers.

But this isn’t a pray-for-you evangelism about the evils of inhaling the incineration of an unctuous weed whose fumes are so toxic that they do nothing but spread death through your body.

Were you like me around dinnertime on Saturday evening? Did you look at the clock and wonder?
Surely I wasn’t left behind, was I?
After all, radio evangelist Harold Camping had been saying that the Rapture would begin at 6 p.m. Saturday, that a series of Heavenly orchestrated earthquakes would crash across the country and that we all would be headed Home.
Well, some of us.
Certainly, if that had happened, I was hoping to be included.