What a year.  The year to beat all years.  There have been life altering events galore, not to mention several thoughts of life ending events all year.  These have been the worst of times and the worser of times, with a little bit of personal hell thrown in on the side.  Other than that, 2009 will go down as one of the top 100 years of my life.

Let’s start with the most important event of the year.  Tiger Woods running over a fire hydrant and having dozens of women pop out with stories of affairs that had gone on for years.  Who knew?  The last time I saw anyone hit a fire hydrant, there was water spewing everywhere.  Tiger runs into a fire hydrant and babes spew out, many of them also spewing some fun-loving stories about the family time they actually spent with Tiger.  Who can forget the poignant photos of Tiger being lovingly attended to by his wife holding his sand wedge.  When his wife was asked why she used a sand wedge to comfort her husband, she laughingly responded, “everybody knows a sand wedge allows you to get under your husband’s head without injuring his eyesight.  Also, it’s unlikely to leave scars.  It just gets the job done in a very, very efficient way.”  She then started laughing hysterically.  No argument here.  I feel the same way about my sand wedge.

Most people don’t know, but Tiger and I have a long and rewarding history together.  Not only do we both have wonderful wives but we both share a love for the game of golf that is second to none.  Certainly, Tiger’s wife doesn’t come ahead of the game of golf.  Or his girlfriends.  Just an editorial comment, here.

Anyway, Tiger and I share a love for the game of golf.  I myself, have mastered this game almost as well as Tiger, although he seems to score a little better than I do.  And, as you all know, while I don’t have a problem with bragging (no problem at all) I have to point out that between us, Tiger Woods and I have won over 200 golf tournaments including 71 PGA titles and 14 Major Tournaments.  No doubt Tiger has won the majority of them (okay all of them) but I still have a love and passion for the game.  And while Tiger has made over a BILLION dollars playing the game, I have been having my own success as well.  Just last year, I clean out Jamie, my brother-in-law,  for $12 cash and a full breakfast at Dees Family Restaurant in Bountiful.  I got the number 2 Senior Special with one scrambled, one piece of bacon, one sausage, one pancake and a side of Metamucil.  My favorite.

Like many of you, I was somewhat stunned to see what happened to my friend, Tiger, and the fire hydrant.  I mean, he hits one single fire hydrant and before you know it, he’s had 15 or more affairs.  All this from one fire hydrant incident!  Hard to believe.
 

Thinking I might like to try my luck with women (my fabulous 32-year marriage to my lovely and beautiful wife, Terri and my 15+ years working with Mildred can only take one so far) I decided to run over a few fire hydrants in Bountiful to see if some women might pop up in my life and claim to have had an affair with me.  Not that it would have been true, but every man wants to be loved and know that others want to be associated with them.  I wasn’t looking for an affair.  I just wanted to reject some women.  And spend some time on Extra, Inside Edition, Larry King, CNN, Fox News, the Glen Beck Show, the Jay Leno Show, Anderson Cooper 360, the NBC Nightly News, The CBS Nightly News with Katie Couric, the ABC Nightly News with Charlie Gibson and/or Diane Sawyer, The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Rush Limbaugh Show, Dr. Laura Schlesinger (why men stray and the women who enable them and the kids they should never have given birth to, and the women who don’t actually say, “I am my kid’s Mom” when they come on the show…for the last time if they don’t say that), The Tonight Show and, of course, be on the cover of every magazine publication in the world.

And I wouldn’t mind having some paparazzi around for a few months.  I think that might be fun having my picture taken from every single angle, 24 hours a day.  We could use a little excitement on Lillywood Lane in North Salt Lake.

Anyway, I ran over two fire hydrants and no women popped out claiming to have known me earlier in life.  So I figured it might be a volume problem and started to look for other fire hydrants that looked vulnerable.  In a single night, I took out 5 of them.  Still no luck.

The next night, determined to make the fire hydrant thing work as well as Tiger did, I tweeted everyone I knew and alerted the paparazzi that I would be taking out more fire hydrants that night.  While I did get a tweet back from Paris Hilton asking me “Whassup?”  no one else seemed to care.  Except the Davis County police.  I had some “splaining” to do.  As I was putting on my orange jump suit at the jail, I told my story, sure that they would call a press conference and the women would come flocking.  All they did was laugh.

No women.  No call from Tiger offering assistance.  No nothing.  I was heart-broken.

However, I have met some very fine people on my work-release program and in a couple of years when I am out of the half-way house, I hope to have them over for Christmas and regale them with my “hydrant exploits.”

 
I bet we all get a good laugh out of the good old days.

When I was a kid growing up I don’t ever remember anyone using the word “inappropriate.”  I am sure I had heard the word, but very seldom.  And when it was spoken, it was for something fairly inconsequential.  For example, if someone were to laugh during sacrament meeting, it might be deemed inappropriate.   Or, if my family was having dinner and one of the less social relatives took two dinner rolls knowing there were twenty dinner rolls to begin with and there were twenty people there, someone might suggest that his actions were inappropriate.  That’s kind of how I remember this word being used.

However, all that’s changed.  In my mind the word “inappropriate” is the most “inappropriately” used word in the world.  That’s right, you heard me…the entire world.

A few years ago we started using this word to describe mildly inappropriate circumstances in everyday life.  Somehow it became more popular as various political types and politically correct groups got involved.  So as not to offend anybody, we started toning down other words to the level of inappropriate.

Situations we used to describe as “holy merciful crap, did you see what just happened?  Someone’s in big trouble!” have been toned down to “inappropriate behavior.”

Governor Mark Sanford of North Carolina apologized for his inappropriate relationship with a woman other than his wife.  Former governor Elliott Spitzer of New York said the same thing.  Senator John Ensign from Nevada said exactly the same thing.  Former governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois said he was involved in some inappropriate activity, although he was quick to point out that while it was inappropriate it was not illegal.

There was a woman from Syracuse that was recently sentenced to a year in jail for something she did.  With a year in jail, you can be sure that she didn’t just sneeze loudly at a funeral.  The television anchor described the situation as this lady being sent to jail for inappropriate behavior.

And, in fact, she did something that was far more than just inappropriate.  She molested three teenage boys and sent illicit photos of herself to these boys via her cell phone.  These are felony charges. I guess they are also inappropriate.

I can just see “inappropriate” being used to address pretty much any situation these days.

John Gotti might have said something at his trial like, “I am sorry I acted so inappropriately when I used guns, bullets and cement to, again, inappropriately address a few issues I had with people I fundamentally disagreed with.”

Osama bin Laden might say, “I inappropriately arranged to have the Twin Towers blown up and inadvertently destroyed thousands of lives and your economy.  Sorry.”  Actually, this is something you would never hear.

Charles Manson has some inappropriate stories.  So do Bonnie and Clyde, Al Capone, and, lately, Roman Polanski. 

I’d like to tell you what I really think of these inappropriate people, but it would be…inappropriate.