“Sometimes giving someone a Second Chance is like giving them another bullet.”—Anonymous
We’ve all heard the old bromide, “everybody deserves a second chance.” A nice thought, to be sure, but not very practical. You might want to give an unsuccessful baseball manager another chance or, perhaps, even a straying politician or a usually reliable restaurant which slips up and overblackens the salmon. You’ll be giving the toddlers a second chance because, well, how were they supposed to know it wasn’t perfectly all right to take off all their clothes in the Costco? But there are certain situations which call for automatic denial of Second Chance Permits With Prejudice, characters who will not be getting a second chance if Hell freezes over. Take Hitler, for instance. I know Adolph is no longer with us but even if he were, where could he get a job? Those Montana militias don’t really pay anything and the Tastee-Freeze won’t hire anyone with a mustache. How about Charles Manson? Think anybody’s giving him a second chance? I mean, I know it’s extremely hard to find a babysitter these days, but still. And what are we going to do with all those kiddie-abusing Catholic priests, overthrown dictators and husbands caught sleeping with their wives’ sisters? Maybe we should revert to colonial days when they shipped all the miscreants off to a giant penal colony called Georgia, in which, by the way, there is still plenty of room.
Still, the great majority of folks probably do deserve a mulligan. Jesus thought so. Something about he who is without sin casting the first stone. You have to be extra careful, though, when you hire a body with a spotted track record. Things like this could happen:
Last Wednesday, a couple of airliners were heading in to Wilmington, North Carolina, for some unknown reason, when a funny thing happened. Not funny ha-ha, but funny-peculiar, as Captain Horatio Huffenpuff used to say. That being, the airport lights went out. No warning, no slow drawing down like at the opera, just ka-bang!—and the place was as black as Rush Limbaugh’s soul.
“We couldn’t even see the approach. No navigation at all,” one pilot exclaimed in air traffic control recordings. The runway at Wilmington International Airport was supposed to be closed at around midnight because of construction but instead was shut off an hour earlier than scheduled.
“The airport lights are not on,” another pilot said. “They actually flipped the switch early.”
Fortunately, fuel was not in short supply and the Delta flight originating from Atlanta and the U.S. Airways flight from Charlotte scurried back to their airports of departure.
“Somebody went in and shut down everything that had to do with landing at this airport,” said ABC News aviation and military consultant Steve Ganyard, a former Marine Colonel. “They shut down the lights, they shut down the instrument landing system. And there was nobody to talk to. It was an unnecessary risk caused by human error and poor supervision. What a dumbhead!”
Airport sources who wish to remain nameless for obvious reasons insisted the gargantuan error was not typical of Wilmington air personnel performance.
“It was the new guy,” one of them pointed out. “We never should have hired him but we felt sorry for the man, figured he deserved a second chance. Before he worked here, he was was a football coach in Williston, Florida—lost his job for a silly mistake. Cliff Lohrie, I think his name was. Cliff is really a good ol’ boy except for his one problem. See, Cliff FORGETS a lot….”
Wilmington Runway Lights BEFORE
Wilmington Runway Lights AFTER
Gilding The Lily? Not Here.
I’m sure all of you have read reviews of plays, movies and even restaurants in the national press which utterly slam the subject of their scrutiny….just knock it to the floor and refuse the kindness of letting it up for air. This sort of thing is simply not done in the friendly local press where the reviewer is on a first name basis with the entire cast of, say, The Fantasticks at the local Little Theater, and where a few negative lines can drastically affect attendance and ruin the play. Not to mention piss off the entire theater community in Smallville, where the reviewer can expect to be getting a universal cold shoulder at Sunday Prayer Meeting and a lot less sleepover invitations for the kids.
On the other hand, there are always a few exceptions—like this restaurant review from a paper in little Chatham, Massachusetts titled “Second Chance Blown.”
“Sorry, but a second chance did not improve Joe’s. The menu is still very limited and the prices are too high. More serious is that the food was not good. Again. We also think that the main hostess—Joe’s wife—could be more courteous in greeting people and assigning tables. More courtesy to customers would have been a big plus. I didn’t rate it terrible because Joe and his wife do present themselves in chic couture but I think they have lost their focus on the food. Also, they do now make a pizza but it is not good.”
Well, outside of that, how did you feel about the place? I know this made ME eager to eat at Joe’s. Nonetheless, I’m giving the reviewer only one star. I didn’t rate her terrible because she does present herself in the chic couture, although I’m not really sure they have too much of that in Chatham.
Let’s Try that One More Time….
If there’s one group that doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of “second chance,” it might be professional athletes. It’s hard to find the worst offender. Is it O.J. Simpson, who magically beat a murder rap, then decided it might be a good idea to write a book titled, “If I Did It.” None the worse for wear after that, Simpson decided to bring along a few friends, invade a hotel room and try to retrieve memorabilia he had lost in a civil trial to the family of his ex-wife. Or maybe it’s boxer Mike Tyson, who, after being imprisoned for rape, returned to polite society and immediately bit off a chunk of an opponent’s ear in a heavyweight bout. Later, he was arrested on drug charges, eventually blowing his large fortune and winding up bankrupt. Next time you visit Walmart, take a close look at that aging greeter who welcomes you at the door—it could be Mike.
Golfer John Daly may have upstaged the competition, though. After his drinking led to a disqualification from a 1993 tournament and then a 12-month ban from 1994 to 1995 after he walked away halfway through a round, Daly was taken into protective custody in 2008 after being found drunk outside a Hooter’s bar. In March, 2010, Daly’s 456-page file of misdemeanors was made public record due to a court order requiring Daly to turn it over to a publishing firm he tried unsuccessfully to sue in 2005.
Daly’s gambling habits have seen him lose an estimated $40 million over 15 years and 1.5 million in one month back in October of 2005. The golfer has been married four times and was charged with assaulting his second wife. Anything left, John?
Then again, there are actors to consider. Bonehead Mel Gibson, for example. After apologizing for homophobic and anti-Semitic comments while making The Passion of the Christ, he was recorded racially abusing his ex-wife. Then, in 2006, he was arrested for drunk driving and told the arresting officer that Jews were responsible for all the world’s wars, though admittedly not for his overimbibing. All this business, of course, did wonders for his career. Turns out there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood.
Second Chances in Horse Country
The time has come, the walrus said to talk of many things. Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings. And also of turmoil in horseland as Bill and Siobhan visit the Ocala Breeder’s Mixed sale to search for a little companion for Ava, whose mother, Dot, will soon be paraded off into the distance, leaving Ava with no one to play with. Oh, there will be Shamu, the nanny, of course, but being thirty years old, he is an unlikely candidate for racing across the fields, kicking up his aged heels in exuberance. So a new pal must be carefully selected, and soon.
Meanwhile, the yearlings, Norm and Serena are reaching the End of Days of adolescent exuberance and abandon. In mid-October, the noisy van will pull down the driveway, load them up and take them five miles down the road to Eisaman Equine, where they will learn to become racehorses.
After an eternity of preparation, Bull Ensign is on the verge of departing for Miami, with one more work scheduled for next Thursday. We are doing things differently with this horse, avoiding the early sprint races required of most young horses and looking to start him at a mile. He is a large fellow, not possessed of the early speed necessary to capture sprints but seemingly able to run all day. We’ll see.
Cosmic Flash, a star-crossed horse of many reversals, finally put himself on the shelf with the ultimate insult—a tendon tear requiring six months of rest and several more of rehab. We have given him to our friend, Debbie Thomas, who will attempt the rehab and, if successful, race him in Boston, where the pickings are easier. If anyone deserves a second chance, he does. Disappointment is the stock in trade of the horse business and his failure to excel was one of our bigger ones, whatever the reasons. Nonetheless, we stagger on unabated. Okay, maybe a little abated. Anyway, in the immortal words of the determined Oat Willie—Onward, Through The Fog!
That’s all, folks….
