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Column
By: Zach Mitcham
The Banks County News
September 25, 2002
 The hair/gut ratio
Pythagorous had his theorum.
Maybe I can establish Mitcham’s theories and observations.
Here’s a start:
1.) The male hair/gut ratio: This is defined as follows: “The acceptable length of hair on a man’s head grows shorter as his waist expands.” As my waist grew in my mid-20s, I recognized that I just started to feel sloppy as my hair got longer. So, for me, hair squared plus waist squared equals sloppy squared.
2.) Flannery O’Connor wrote “A good man is hard to find.” But how about a good shoe? Heck yeah, a good shoe is hard to find. And yes, I am a shoe loyalist. There’s this old brown pair that I’ve worn pretty much everywhere, everyday for over five years. I’ve bought other pairs and I’ll give ‘em a chance, try to break them in, but they never make the cut. And days later, I’ll be back to that trusted, old pair as sure as Otis hits the bottle. Remember Otis, don’t you? From Andy Griffeth.
3.) The more a guy talks about his golf game, the less you have to fear him on the course. That goes for any other sport or endeavor.
4.) The elimination of the “small” choice of fries or drinks in some eating establishments is just the first wave of a vast conspiracy to eliminate traditional sizes from our vocabulary. Soon we will no longer have medium or large, or even extra-large. There will just be biggie, big-biggie, Oh-my-biggie.
5.) The one-finger wave means a different thing in the country than in the city.
6.) Kindness is helping overkill. You know what I mean. That nice lady sees you put your fork down to try to breathe between shovels full of food, then insists that you “take out” for a fourth or fifth time.
7.) Love seems inversely proportional to credit taken. (No I didn’t rip that off of a fortune cookie.)
8.) Letting a person in front of you in traffic is not a tremendous act of kindness. However, it always warrant a “thank you” wave of the hand or nod of the head. Anything less is very irritating to the one who has been polite.
9.) Snoring is shocking when you hear yourself do it. Sometimes I wake and open my eyes, then snort with an inward blast of air, alarming myself.
10.) Speaking of sleep, nobody cares about your dream unless they’re in it. Tell one of your dreams to somebody and get a little long-winded with it. Unless, it’s about how that person saved your life or hit a home run, I guarantee their mind will drift.
I know my lame “proofs and theorums” won’t stand up like “a squared plus b squared equals c squared.”
But — at least for this week — it beats writing about Iraq.
Zach Mitcham is an editor with MainStreet Newspapers.
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Column
By: Phillip Sartain
The Banks County News
September 25, 2002
 Just let me explain
At least once every 12 months or so, I have to explain myself. And while I sometimes feel as though the explanation should have been obvious from the beginning, there are times when maybe a little more would help. So this is my “explanation” column for the year 2002.
It all started last Christmas when I decided that I’d bought my daughters just about all the dolls, fake jewelry and frilly stuff I could stand. Combine that with the fact that a guy can only pass by the sporting goods store so many times before he has to act on his natural urges, and you can see what’s coming.
There being no way around my dilemma, I bought the proverbial basketball goal for the driveway. And, like any good Dad would do, I picked out the sturdiest, most professional goal I could find. What I ended up with was a huge box containing enough parts to construct a small combat tank complete with it’s own cannon.
Of course, part of the problem that men have when they shop is the fact that they aren’t charting their testosterone level like they should. On the day I bought the goal, I left my test kit at home. When the salesman told me that for ten dollars more they would come to my house, assemble the goal, and serve me beer and popcorn while I waited, my testosterone was apparently reaching some kind of all time zenith.
Instead of screaming “yes” in his face, I gave him my Clint Eastwood look and said, “No thanks, I can handle it.” At age 44, that’s another way of saying, “I like the pain and disorientation that goes along with a hernia and brain damage.”
My wife, not surprisingly, knows a stupid hormonal response when she sees one. But unfortunately, I was home by then, and laid out on the couch massaging my new hernia after unloading the crate from the back of the truck.
And in case you’re wondering, this is where the explanation part begins. But first, it’s preceded by the “degrading admission” part where I note that it’s almost October and the goal is still not assembled. But, like I said, I can explain.
To begin with, it made sense not to assemble the goal during Christmas. That allowed my hernia to settle into a brief hiatus. By February, I had managed to get all the pieces out of the box and scattered about the garage in a more or less totally haphazard and random fashion.
But then I realized that the instructions were all wrong. When I called the manufacturer to complain, my testosterone level was peaking again and I was able to badger the help desk long enough to get them to admit that I could skip step three out of the 113 step instruction manual. I made the guy tell my wife over the phone.
Unfortunately, in the meantime, the weather turned cold and I was delayed yet again. By the time the weather stopped being too cold, it was too hot to work on the goal. Surprisingly, none of these explanations seemed satisfactory to my wife, so I finally had to give her the real explanation.
“It has to do with the sport,” I started out. “Have you ever watched Michael Jordan play basketball?”
“A little,” she answered.
“Well, if you’ve noticed, he’s great at anticipating what’s going to happen next. He doesn’t block a shot by going to where the ball is, he goes to where the ball is going to be.” I felt like I was revealing the location of the Holy Grail.
“So what’s your point?” she asked.
“I’m not procrastinating, I’m anticipating. It’s not about where the goal is now, it’s about where it’s going to be. That’s where I need to be on this thing. I need to be in the middle of the driveway.”
She looked at me for a moment, then said, “I’ll be right back. I’m going to get your kit.” As of the writing of this column, I’ve signed a blood oath declaring my intention to have the goal fully functional before the girls go off to college.
In the meantime, I’m just wondering if Michael Jordan ever has to do an explanation column.
Phillip Sartain is an attorney in Gainesville.
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