Okay. I feel like a dunderhead about now. For whatever reason, my pea-brain thought…was certain…that today, July 8, 2015 marked the one year point of the first post on speaktherights.com. After all, I am the only one who has posted anything on the website!
Well..upon further review (that is what NFL refs say after they have looked at a replay of a play)…I actually started this on July 6TH! Not July 8th. For some reason I was certain today was the first anniversary of this sight. Just goes to show I am more interested in speaking the rights than I am keeping track of numbers.
Here is the first installment of speaktherights.com
Thanks to those who have joined for the ride.
WHY SPEAK THE RIGHTS?
Good question…
Hopefully a good answer.
I like the sound of it. It sounds true. Truth is a very good thing. The truth will set you free from the bondage of untruth. That does sound good.
I tell many folks I don’t believe in fairness. It is the stuff of mythology. I gave a eulogy at a friend’s funeral in May of this year. I looked at his grown son and I said what I had to: life is not fair.
While I do not believe in fairness I do believe in good and bad. I do believe in wrong and right. When we speak wrongly we have screwed up. We all do it.
It just feels good to speak the rights.
Hopefully no one out there will mistaken the connotation of “rights” with political overtures. That would be to err. Just like we are not talking about “rights” as a notion of…gulp…fairness. That would be a painful mistake.
Speak the rights really took on a life of its own when I was broadcasting high school football games. My buddy Gus Stephenson and I had a grand time for a while relaying the plaudits of the athletic endeavors of teenage heroes on the gridiron. We enjoyed doing so for a number of years until it was time to move on. When I would agree with Gus at times, I would steal a line from a Shakespearean play where the character says to another: “Thou speak’st aright”.
I would say to Gus in agreement of his explanation to what happened on the following play: “You speak the rights, Gus”. It became a part of the lexicon of many around me. I just figured it must be time to share.
A number of years ago I wrote a weekly human interest column for a fledgling and now defunct local newspaper. I was flattered by the offer to share on a regular basis. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I got a kick outta folks agreeing with what I said. I enjoyed it much more when I made someone laugh. I did not enjoy getting chewed out by my mother for using the word “hell” in a column. I’ll try not to do that again.
I will, however, within the confines of this space…quite oxymoronic in the year 2014. Does anyone else out there still want to date a document starting with 19…? I am guilty, on occasion.
Let me thank my dear wife Carrie for putting me behind each letter I type here today. She reminded me that…and convinced me that…all the column writing I did needed a comeback. She was right when she told me folks enjoyed what I wrote about. I just hope that will find a way to continue as I write some more.
I will write about friendship, sports, love, faith, music, time, work, movies, travel, family, history, heartache, politics, movies, schools, and whatever else may present itself that day.
Regardless…and sometimes it may hurt a little…I will speak the rights.
Danny Johnson