EXCITING AUCTION ITEM UP FOR BID

Here in Torrington, the Warner Theater is conducting a major fund-raiser, its annual online auction. Many terrific items have been donated and are up for bid. By the way, the bidding closes today, so make sure you go online before the end of the day and place your bid. (If you are reading this after May 15th via email or on my Web site, well, you might be able to go online and bid on a time machine, which will allow you to turn back the clock and then take part in the Warner auction. If there are no time machines being auctioned off at the moment, please pay closer attention next year.)

One of the auction items is titled, “A Morning of Birding with Republican-American Nature Columnist Greg Hanisek.” Greg writes a regular column about the great outdoors for this newspaper, and the winning bidder plus three guests will get to spend a morning with Greg in rush hour traffic on Interstate-84 flipping rude hand gestures to other motorists.

Oh wait, my mistake. I’m thinking of a different kind of “birding.” I believe Greg will escort the highest bidder and guests through the woods to watch birds. I guess that’s why a pair of binoculars and an outdoor field guide are included in the prize.

When I saw the notice in the paper about Greg and the auction, I said to my wife, “Hey, I’m a regular columnist. How come they’re not auctioning off a morning with me?”

She replied, “Well, Greg to going to take people out into nature, his area of expertise, and they will spend time exploring the environment where he gets ideas and inspiration for his column.” Then she asked, “If people spent a morning with you, what exactly would they experience?”

“Umm, good question,” I said. “I haven’t actually thought of the details yet, but I’m sure it would be very similar, with the winning bidder and guests spending time in the environment where I get my ideas and inspiration for my weekly humor column.”

“You mean people would pay good money to sit in our basement all morning on a Saturday, while wearing bathrobes and Red Sox hats?” she asked. “And they’d chug coffee by the gallon and eat doughnuts while staring at the computer screen for hours on end?”

“I don’t stare at the computer screen,” I protested. “Whenever you see me doing that, I’m, uh, thinking. That’s when I’m trying to find the perfect punch line.”

“I see. Let me know if you ever find one.”

“Hey, not fair,” I said. “You’re making it sound boring. But it would be very exciting. I could show the winning bidder and guests how I pace around the basement talking to myself. Then when an idea comes to me, I run to the computer and start typing away. Or when I don’t have any ideas, I can show them how a Google search of the phrase, ‘ear hair,’ returns almost 9 million matches, enough fresh material for a lifetime of columns.”

“Wow, sounds great,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Then I could show them how important it is to run the column through the computer’s Spell-Check function,” I said. (Side note: I have learned over the years that their is know moor valuable tool four a righter then Spell-Check. For example, the previous sentence passed with flying colors.)

“I bet the Warner Theater would raise a ton of money,” I concluded.

She nodded and said, “Only if the LOWEST bidder had to spend a morning with you.”