Columns

I must tell you today about a guy I have known and loved like a brother.

The words don’t come easily. They bounce around in my brain and find their way to my fingers in clumsy and inadequate sequence. I pound at my keyboard in earnest hope of intellectual inspiration, but here goes.

I first met Don Collins on a muggy August afternoon in Jackson, Miss. We had grown up 45 minutes apart, but it took a quarter century and 600 miles to germinate a friendship that would stand stalwart to the flow of time.

The line drive whistled off the pink bat toward third base, where it scattered the dust when it landed untouched by a fielder. The batter took off toward first base, where a coach was encouraging a runner already there to move along toward second.

The little hitter stopped at first, and as each successive hitter made contact and followed her, she kept shuttling around the bases, until, after she crossed home, she headed back to first base, where she was detoured by the coach and told she could sit down.

I don’t have a dog in this fight, but now I can’t imagine that Mitt Romney has any more chance of carrying Shelby County on Election Day (either of them)  than Hooch does of of winning the Westminster Dog Show.

That became cat-eyed clear when I read the other day for the first time the story of the Romney family’s dog and his ride atop the car on a family vacation.

I realize many of you who doggedly follow the political pontifications already know all the leavings on this.

I have escaped a scourge of Valentine’s Day that I had feared might stain my life.

No one in my family received a “tattoo Valentine,” and I am forever grateful that their precious hides were spared.

Now, I know those boxes I saw among the kids’ cards at a couple of stores this past weekend didn’t include needles and ink, but they did carry with them, I fear, an impression on delicate minds that was equally dangerous and potentially damaging.