In a word, “ZOINKS!”

Those 365 days of 2022 seemed to slip away quickly and for those of us in the weekly news biz, it goes by even faster. (We only have 52 units – weeks – to divide our year into). One minute it’s a cold day in the beginning of January and in another, it’s a cold day at the end of December. (Hmm, I see a general theme here, it’s always a cold day here it seems.) At any rate, at the end of the year I always like to recap what thoughts have bounced inside my head and escaped through the tips of my fingers to the keyboard.

The year in Don’t Rush Me. Of course as in year’s past, there’s been tons of homespun, conversationally written logic, Neanderthal philosophy and patriotic pablum which always seems to find a way to newsprint. But, 2022 was a little different than in years past. This year I wrote of the passing of two friends, Steve Percival and Mark Kelly. I opined on an old football coach, Kurt Richardson. I even shared with readers my discovery of and how to stir fry using Ramen noodles. It was a year of fun, of loss, I think more than that it was a year of moving forward and trying to help folks heal.

Usually through the course of the year folks will write to me with scathing rebukes. I received no such rebukes this year – unless it was from the column headlined, Fruit Cakes or Bust. Two folks wrote  to tell me I was wrong not to like Fruit Cake. But that was it in the Rebuking of Rush Saga. Like I said, it was an unusual year.

I must be getting soft.

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One part of column writing – writing to evoke whatever emotion I want you to feel (yeah, you can call me a manipulator) – is to come up with a compelling headline. The headline is the bait to get folks to read. Here, in no particular order, are my favorite Don’t Rush Me headlines from 2022.

Not Finding The Romance Of A Sponge Bath – June 8. This led to a column two weeks later headlined, Sponge Baths And More Spur Readers To Write.

For Mothers Day, I called upon my inner Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson and wrote a gem of a column headlined, To All The Moms I’ve Loved Before. (For some childish reason this makes me smile.)

If Wishes Were Horses, Beggars Would Ride from July 20 was a nice one just about “wondering.”

Sometimes you have to have a little bravado in your life if you want attention, so I wrote on August 10, Never (ever) Underestimate The ‘Power’ of Don! (See, that makes you wanna’ read it all over again!) And finally, Not of Mice Nor Men, Just Cats And Dogs, from March 23.

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I enjoy writing columns partly because I like telling stories. Since I have a face for radio and voice for print, many times over the last 37-plus years, here’s where my story-telling happens.

In November I was able to share with readers stories about the UFOs flying over Michigan. For that column I watched a 90-minute, live presentation by Bill Konkolesky, the Michigan Director for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). Believe it or not, Michigan is sort of a UFO hotspot. Look up this Don’t Rush Me from November 11, Don Dives Into The Weird Stuff.

I loved sharing the story of Birgie in a column from October 26. Birgie is a Clarkston resident who, to help herself feel better, started helping others by putting out signs which read, “You Got This.” (Which is also the headline of the column that week.) Thanks for talking to me Birgie, you brightened my day.

Do you remember the science lesson from August 17? You know, the one which reported there are two types of sweat glands, eccrine and apocrine. And, the one which informed readers, “Between a pair of feet, that’s a quart of liquid a day, nearly two gallons a week — that’s like 91 gallons of foot sweat a year produced by one human. If we have 330 million Americans, that 30,030,000,000 gallons of foot sweat produced by the good ol’ US of A.” That one was headlined, What You Need To Know About Sweat.

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At the beginning of each year I always find a random word to guide me for the following 12 months. This past January, I closed my eyes, flipped the pages of an old, old dictionary and rested my pointer finger on my word of the year. Wrote I in a column headlined, A Most Interesting Word Of The Year, “(Drum roll, please): the word to live by in 2022 is, Thyself. All I can say is, ‘World and those living on it, watchout. This could be The Year of Don and no one is safe!’”

Just the opposite would prove true for 2022. On May 19 I wrote, One Good Turn Deserves A Big, Crash, Bang. That’s when I tore a tendon in my knee, needed surgery and months of physical therapy. Yup, as I said then, “All I can say is, ‘Bumbles don’t bounce like they used to.’ And, will I add, that really kinda sucks. Whether you know it or not your hero (that would be me) ain’t as young as he once was. There was a time I could jump off tall buildings on the run, with knees bent, land on two feet, get up and continue running. (Okay, so it was a regular sized garage about 10 feet up in the air, but they were still thrilling leaps of testosterone-filled logic.) There was a time I could tumble down stairs, tuck and roll, dust off my shirt, shake my noggin’ and keep going.”

Them days is gone!

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Here’s to a wonderful 2023! Thanks for reading and keep on writing! Send your comments to DontRushDon@gmail.com

  don rush, don’t rush me