A Column of Thanks to Those Who Read--and Write

I’m a little reflective this week because Friday’s column was the 500th since I began this chore of thrice-weekly meditations. There’s nothing special about that number, other than it’s about 494 more than I thought I could crank out when they gave me the job.

So today, before embarking on the next 500 (ugh) and at the risk of coming across like a slobbery Catskills comic, I want to send out a thank-you note to you readers.

A strange bond develops between a columnist and readers. I talk to you through the column, and you talk back through your letters. In a bizarre way, we sort of know each other. Sometimes we like each other, sometimes we don’t. Some of you think I’m inside your head; some of you think I’m out of mine.

A Huntington Beach man recently wrote: “Always a delight to read your articles. You seem such a reasonable, witty and sensible man.”

That didn’t square with a man in Dana Point who some time ago offered a four-page handwritten letter with this painful assessment: “The content of your articles is rarely relevant to anything of any interest to anyone.” He added, however, that I would always be welcome in his home.

I should give him the address of the man from Huntington Park in Los Angeles County, who said he stumbled upon a column by chance: “I want to thank you for your exceptional insights about life’s trials and tribulations. I now don’t feel so alone.”

Speaking of insights: “From reading your columns,” writes a woman from Fullerton, “I sense you struggle with the Christian roots in your upbringing. You know right from wrong. You are running from the truths that were taught to you from the Bible as a child. And try as you may to rationalize them away, they still haunt you.”

That came last week and was one of many from people who felt angry or betrayed when I was cavalier about the existence of topless nightclubs. A woman named Tricia wrote: “While I don’t align myself with all of your viewpoints, I have tended to be a supporter of yours, even when those around me have disagreed and stopped reading your column. I guess they were right.”

Dear Tricia: No, they aren’t right. Trust your own instincts.

A woman from Orange decided not to mince words: “When you have the pleasure, honor and intestinal fortitude to enter into a real relationship with a real girlfriend/wife and you begin to explore real intimacy and connectedness with a real woman, you may reconsider your fledgling, somewhat callous position on adult entertainment.”

And yet, after a column a few weeks ago on “re-inventing” myself, a Huntington Beach woman wrote: “Here’s one woman who hopes you never change.”

Recent columns critical of public officials inspired some of you to laud my “courage,” a personality trait apparently lost on the man from Garden Grove, who ripped me for being too squishy on gun ownership. He offered the postscript that, “I doubt you have the sack to respond to this.”

He was correct.

A recent tongue-in-cheek column about Richard Nixon confessing all about Watergate prompted a Newport Beach reader to write to me on school notebook paper. Lest there be any doubt why, the writer explained: “I didn’t want to waste nice stationery on the likes of you.”

That sort of diluted the effect of a nice note from a Fullerton woman that greeted me when I recently returned from vacation: “This is prompted more now by a sense of separation anxiety with your column not appearing because of vacation. I didn’t realize how much I had grown to enjoy tri-weekly doses of your yuppie humor and predicaments.”

If nothing else, I hope this mixed bag of letters helps explain why I’m so disturbed. If you got diagnoses this contradictory, don’t you think you’d be a little nuts too?

Don’t worry, I’ll muddle through.

Whether you like the column or think I’m a dope, thanks for taking time to write or call. Your comments supply the energy for the column and, believe me, every letter is read and taken to heart (some of them, too much).

I’m not sure I’m up for another 500, and I know many of you aren’t, either.

But what the heck, let’s give it a shot.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.