I Know Nothing...

This column originally appeared on Sunday, April 20, 2008

Behold the glory of spring in West Chester.

The sounds of birds chirping outside your window. The sights of mothers and father strollering their children down brick sidewalks in the warm evenings. The smell of flowers coming into bloom. The touch of insincere political candidates grabbing your hand and slapping your back as though you and he, or she, were as close as prison cell mates.

Unfortunately, all this vernal activity simply adds up to one more way of exposing one of my greatest failings in life: I cannot for the life of me tell what kind of trees are flowering down my block, what kind of birds are chirping outside my window, and what kind of flowers are blooming in my town.

You can call me stupid for not knowing the basic of flora and fauna around these parts. I've been called stupid before, and sometimes by people who actually know what they are talking about. I'm used to it.

I prefer to view myself as vastly uniformed.

It's the line of work I'm in, I suppose, that counts for my lack of knowledge in matters of day to day life.

You remember the story of how I got this job in the fist place, don't you? How back in 1982 Bill Dean, the saintly longtime editor of the Daily Local News, gave me the mynah bird test? That's where you get a set of facts abut a burglary that included the theft of a mynah bird, and are expected to write a story based on them. If you mention the bird in the lead paragraph, they make you a news reporter. If you don't, you get to be a sportswriter.

Just kidding. Advertising salesman, actually.

But that's the point. All I knew was that the mynah was the lead, and I got the job. I didn't even know what a mynah bird was. I couldn't tell a mynah bird from a cockatiel if you spotted me the wings and the plumage. But there I was, writing about it nonetheless, with authority.

Here's how the job works. The editor tells you to write a story about why a gallon of gas costs more today than a bottle of Chateau-du-Pape 2005. You call someone at the AAA, write down whatever he or she tells you, get them to spell their name correctly, regurgitate it succinctly in 750 words or less by 5 p.m., get the mynah in the lead, file it, and forget it. I've done thousands of stories about subjects I knew nothing about, and still don't. And those are the ones that made Page One. Don't get me started on the inside pages.

I was reminded of this lack of knowledge recently when I mentioned in a column that one of my neighbors had been pruning the blossoms from her gladiolas. A few days after its publication, another neighbor stopped by and said, “Gladiolas don't have blossoms. You must have meant hydrangeas.” Who knows, maybe she said geraniums. But she gave me a look like you give the dog when he hasn't made it outside.

Look. I know I can't tell a crimson-rumped waxbill from a Madagascar periwinkle, but I do know what I like. And I do like the way that South Church Street in early May looks like a snow shower had greeted us out of season when the trees shed their white blossoms, and I like being awakened on a spring morning by the song birds who live next door.

As for the insincere politicians, don't worry. I learned their names long ago.