So I started writing this  “blog”…I still hate that word…on July 8th of last year.  This is post number 148.

When I started writing this thing  I was acting like I knew what I was doing.  I was clueless.  I talked myself into knowing how to proceed.  It has worked out.

For whatever reason, I have found my way to five continents with the words I bang out on this laptop computer.  That is pretty cool.  I will never get to all these international locations physically.  I have no intention to do so.  Thoughts…and words, however, can take on  lives of their own; we know this.  Now I have tangible proof.  Does it feel good ?  Yes, it does.  Do I wish I had a larger audience?  Yes, I do.  Do I lose sleep over anything that has to do with this blog?  No, I don’t.  I just keep pecking away as the spirit moves me.

I did, however, in the middle of the fall, hope that I would put in 200 posts in 365 days.  That was my goal.  I don’t think I will reach it.  I have 66 days to write 52 more posts.  Can I do it?  Yes, I can.  Will I do it?  I doubt it.  After all, I do write when I think it is time.  Maybe  it will work out.  Perhaps I will hit a spell that is prolific beyond my wildest dreams.  I doubt it.

700 word is the usual intent, unless I know we will only be here for a short while…like tonight.  When I wrote a newspaper column, 700 words is what I aimed for.  Hoping like heck I could makes sense and keep someone…anyone….interested with the words I put forth, was what I wanted.

Some of these posts have exceeded 700 words…one ran like 3000 or something like that.  I had to add ice to my tea glass six times that day.

When I wrote newspaper columns I had an editor.  He rarely touched my stuff.  I thank him for that.  A couple if times he felt compelled to put his two cents in and make some cosmetic changes.  Did I lose sleep?  No, I didn’t.  He was the boss.  One is supposed to respect authority.

With this blog, I guess I am the boss.  It works out.  I push myself at times.  I have gone down a few dark alleys on these pages that were no picnic to write about.  Cathartic…that is the word.  Writing about some things that don’t always feel so good is always cathartic.  Yes, it does make me feel better.  Most of the times I feel better a few days later.

I walked six miles yesterday.   It felt good.  My dear wife, Carrie, was getting her hair done.   I walked as she was in the beauty parlor.  She told me her appointment would probably last about an hour and ten minutes.  Two hours and ten minutes later we saw each other again.  I walked the whole time.  My six mile estimate is kind.  I am sure it was more than that.  I enjoyed every step.  I even found where the side walk ends.

My walk was cathartic too.  I found a great universal truth as I walked.  I will share it with you one day…I think.  No, I am quite sure I will.  And I am quite sure I will continue to…

Speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

There is a school picture sitting a few inches to the left of my laptop computer as I type this.

This is my kindergarten school picture.  I was five, I suppose.  It was the 1973-1974 school year.

Forty years later we are relegated to this:

This is my 2013-12014 school picture.

Though the photo from my youth is a bit distorted and looks foggy compared to the original sitting near my computer, it seems appropriate that it looks that way.  Time has will put that kind of mist between present you and the younger you.  Forty years.  I don’t think I have ever even stopped to think I have been around that long…let alone have a photograph to compare myself to.

I enjoyed playing football when I was five.  That has not stopped.  On a separate tab on my computer, I am looking in on the NFL Draft.  The first round is happening tonight.  I still enjoy football.  We all know that.

Update:  Amari Cooper just got drafted by the Oakland Raiders.  Last year he played the Alabama Crimson Tide.  I was hoping he would hang out until number nine and the Giants would take him.

When I was five I ate bacon, eggs, and toast for breakfast.  I ate my bacon first.  I ate my eggs.  I ate my toast with plenty of butter and my beloved grape jelly.  This would be the meal that would start my day growing up.  My mother was a good sport.

My dear wife, Carrie, is a good sport too.  On most mornings she has my egg, my ham, and toast…dry these days…waiting on me as I open the morning paper.  She loves me.  Low cal bread has replaced good old wholesome white.  Blackberry fruit spread has fewer calories than the jelly.   No butter…or margarine.  My breakfast is a must to keep the machine rolling.  Thyroid issues and all that…stuff that I did not worry about when I was five has found a way to remind me I am forty-seven these days.

When I was five I had two grandfathers, a grandmother, and two great-grandmothers.  All the grandmothers were on my Dad’s side of the family.   I never met my Mom’s mother.  I regret that as much as anything I think I could.  I have been blessed.

They are all gone now.  When Granny died in November I was rendered a man with no grandparents left.  Hey, I am not complaining.  Forty-six years with my Granny…are you kidding me.  I am fortunate.

When I was five I loved to eat ice cream.  I still do.

When I was five I was on bicycle burning calories faster than I could take them in.  I was always on the go.  I am still always on the go.  Traveling to my work place,  I am in a car over two hours a day….not exactly a calorie burning endeavor.  That is why I spent forty-five minutes on the elliptical and then cooled down on the stationary bike as I watched homemade dvds of the show Ed.

When I was five I watched Cowboy Bob on Channel 4.  His real name is Bob Carter.  I met him about seven years ago thanks to my old friend Norm Taylor.  Cowboy Bob made me feel like a kid again.

What makes me feel like a kid?  Listening to the Bay City Rollers.  Riding a bike. Lying on the ground looking into a clear blue sky concentrating on planes flying 40,000 feet in the air above me.  Funny though, I can’t see them as well as I did back then.

I also feel like a kid when I turn on the Cincinnati Reds on radio.  Marty Brennaman is still calling the Reds games just like he did when I was sitting in the yard with my Dad.  He was in a folding lawn chair drinking a glass of cold lemonade.  I was chasing lightning bugs and kicking up freshly cut grass clippings in the whirlwind that was my nonstop existence.  When Johnny Bench was up to bat, however, I paused for the next pitch Marty would tell me about.

I’m outta here.  Going to go check the score the old fashioned way…on 700 WLW in Cincinnati.  50,000 watts, baby.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson