October 1, 2001
Column 110
Thank you Mick Manning!!
If you follow the Cyberdarts’ ListServe you may have read the recent post by Manhattan’s Tina DiGregorio thanking the many darters who have contacted her recently to be sure she was okay. Although she didn’t mention it, I was one of them.
After the phone rang several times, someone picked up the receiver. The conversation went something like this:
DARTOID: Tina? Tina! Is that you? Are you okay?
TINA: Oh Mick. OH Mick!
So, apparently Tina’s doing just fine.
Her post got me to thinking about a few of the messages that have recently appeared on my computer screen.
For example, not long ago, just after I posted my column “Ban Assholes,” I heard from some guy named Dave Saba who thought that it was I who should be banned. “One of your columns talked about a very young female and you had the nerve to make a veiled sexual reference about her. If she were my daughter you and your wife would have to move because I’d burn your house down with you in it.”
Of course, Dave’s absolutely correct. Sometimes I just plain don’t think. Sometimes I get carried away. I’ve already apologized to Dave. But right here and now I want to apologize to everybody else, and make a pledge.
Never again will I refer to any female darter as “very young.” And for good measure, I will never call Jerry Umberger or Brian Dougherty young either.
NOTE TO DAVE: How old’s your daughter?
P.S.: My wife and I have moved.
I received another e-mail recently from some mystery person named Kadeem bin Aswan el Salami. He claimed I owed him $50. Of course, if you very carefully analyze the letter in this person’s name with a Dick Tracy Secret Decoder Ring, they spell: Kadeem bin Aswan el Salami.
No. Actually the de-coded letters spell: Roger Carter. For years Roger’s been after me for $50. I don’t know why. I just don’t understand it. It’s not like I could have been stupid enough to challenge him to a little game or darts.
NOTE TO ROGER: How’s about double or nothin’? Meet me in Kabul next week.
About the same time I heard from Roger I received a message from Jay Tomlinson. The transmission was a little jumbled up. If I understood it correctly, he was looking for his copy of the June, 2001 issue of Bull’s Eye News.
I dashed off a quick reply: “Call Jay Tomlinson.”
Finally, just yesterday, the little “You’ve Got Mail” voice (which, by the way, DAVE, sounds exactly like Britany Spears) in my laptop alerted me to a brand new message.
I scrolled down…
Clicked…
And, damn, if it wasn’t from some bloke in England, a foreign country that speaks English with a funny accent, eats cucumber sandwiches without crust and drinks warm beer – but which is pledged to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with America in the difficult days ahead.
“Blimey, Dartoid! Was that YOU on the phone the other day?!”
I responded immediately. “Yes it was, Mick. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you for ALL you do for America.
From the Field,
Dartoid
