A Columnist's Eye View

When people first meet me, they often comment, "Bob, you're much older than I thought!" To which I reply, "I owe it all to dentistry. Before I became a dentist, I was half this age and looked a lot younger than that." Sometimes people refrain from mentioning that I am a bit heavier than they had pictured me, but not often enough. There is a common misconception that writers are invariably small, bird-like people on the order of Billy Barty. In reality, many of us are as fit and robust as Ted Kennedy or the late Orson Welles.

Many years ago, I was invited to contribute an occasional page to the CDA Journal. I was so honored, I neglected to inquire about the pay. Instead, I asked, "What will I write about?" The answer was the stock axiom, "Write about what you know." I discovered, with the help of my teenage granddaughter, that I didn't actually know anything. Oh, I had strong suspicions about some things, but invariably they turned out to be at wide variance from the facts as interpreted by anybody born after 1980. For example, I thought popular music should have a tune you could whistle and lyrics you could sing without getting your mouth washed out with soap.

So I developed a philosophy of writing with these tenets:

* Never record anything that contains verifiable facts. In fact, stay away from facts altogether; they can be an acute source of embarrassment to the publishers and me.

* Aim for 900 words, including "a" and "the."

That's it -- 900 words of nonfactual material. You think that's easy? I'll sit around for 20 minutes honing an article based on whimsy, fantasy and quirkiness when all of a sudden a fact sneaks in and I have to start all over again.

That's why the most important element of my work is the illustration by Charlie Hayward. Charlie never drew a fact-intensive cartoon in his life; it's against the Cartoonists' Code of Ethics. One accurate, reality-based toon and you're out of the Guild is their position.

It is interesting to note that none of the people ultimately responsible for getting my meticulously researched scientific and advanced dental observations onto the printed page are dentists themselves. You'd think it would be easy to make them believe anything I claimed had a dental origin, like convincing Charlie Hayward that the human dentition consists of 75 teeth and the Obicularis Oris is a constellation just southwest of Orion. Such is not the case. Charlie draws dragons, snakes, Edsels and dental surgeries with equal facility. His is not to reason why. If the text has no relation to the illustration, it's my fault, he reasons, or Jeanne Marie's.

Managing Editor Jeanne Marie Tokunaga's job is equally complex. Mainly, she is the watchdog who keeps CDA from getting sued by some beef-witted subscriber who can't tell when I'm kidding. Her response to these irate parties is "If any statement by Horseman makes you consider filing a lawsuit, then he's kidding." Poised with red pen in hand, she asks me, "What is the exact meaning of 'cracker bottom'?" and "I can't find 'doodyhead' in my dictionary. Are you sure that's the way to spell it?" I don't know what they're teaching them in journalism school these days.

When you get to the last pages in this publication, after having absorbed enough scientific facts to make your eyes bleed, you encounter a page created by two guys who have no idea what they're doing, edited by a woman who can't explain either one of them.

Please don't write in complaining that X-rays were not invented by Dr. Frankenstein and that real people's hands don't have four fingers. Address all your concerns to Editor Dr. Jack Conley. Don't believe him when he tells you he never heard of any of us.