I worship at the feet of humor writer Dave Barry, who really knows how to please his audience. At one bookstore reading I attended, the staff of the store insisted that “Everyone who isn’t buying a book today has to stand, over there... behind the rope. Mr. Barry only has time to sign books bought at this store, today.” 

When Mr. Barry came in, he told them to take the rope down; let everyone sit down in the nicely laid out chairs, and said he’d stay and sign anything anyone wanted signed, just as long as anyone wanted to. 

I only mentally stuck my tongue out at the staff. 

He retired from his weekly column decades ago, so I am delighted to have new offerings from him on Substack.

One of his Substack pieces threw me.  He wrote that when people sent him hate mail, they didn’t realize they were writing his next column for him. “I love you, wacky readers; please stay away from my house!”

I’m jealous. When I get—not even “hate,” because that’s a bit strong for them, but, well, “not completely happy with my column and you’re not funny at all” comments, I curl up into a whimpering ball in a corner and am scared to go out for days. 

And of course it is annoying as heck that the comments have very little connection to what I wrote. I have failed as a writer, since I have not stated my ideas clearly enough so that even the simpleminded might understand, like that person presently occupying the office of the presidency who multiple times swore oaths that he later admitted he did not understand.

Often the commenter has decided I meant some such thing or other and that I am very wrong; they are going out of their way to correct my misapprehension. Most of the time they seem to be jumping on a bandwagon they have built themselves from their very vivid imaginations. 

One accused me of trafficking in cliches. Nervously, I input my work into an internet cliche catcher and the damn thing didn’t find any. Obviously one of those ineffective AI things, not as capable of digging as deeply as a human can.  

People valiantly posted on the internet that they stood for someone they thought I disparaged, whose identity, however, they were only guessing at. Others thought I meant someone else entirely, and admitted to agreeing with me, when, uh, that wasn’t who I was talking about, who was probably not real but more of a conglomerate, but OK! I’ll take any agreement I can get.  

Several, mistaking the nature of my work, complained I had not made positive suggestions to relieve the issues I griped about.

One reader carefully picked through every line of one of my columns—we do have a lot of retired people with lots of time on their hands around here—explaining everything I should have done, apparently unaware that my column does not intend to be educational. (OK, I am making gratuitous assumptions about my column that it may not agree with but that’s tough. If it disagrees, it can write its own column.) 

Similar to when I first moved here and had more than one medicine chest and couldn’t find my allergy pills: they were in a different medicine cabinet. Yeah. I was looking for drugs in all the wrong places.  

Likewise, do not seek answers from a column named “Snarky.” I leave education to the experts, i.e., those who can say without blushing that they are not trying to teach the second graders actual, computational, arithmetic, because it is not a higher concept.  Those were higher concepts like “less” and “more,” I recall. 

Said second grader is now a rather high-powered computer engineer, having somewhere along the line acquired those concepts. 

Though I confess to sometimes having bad reading comprehension myself. Today I received a message explaining, “Before we send you any email, we need you to confirm your subscription.”

The message was in an email. That they sent me.

I’m going to have to ponder the metaphysical meaning of that until cocktail time.