I started doing a weekly column in 1985.
Remember 1985? Yeah, me neither. For me, it was a blur of diapers and pureed squash and walking squalling babies around the house at 4AM to try to get them to sleep. I could sit down in the rocking chair at that time of night, turn on the TV, and have my choice of any religious program I wanted. (And that was it. Nothing - literally, nothing - else was on.)
I started off writing about sports, but then I was asked to write a column about politics. So I wrote scathing pieces about federal cabinet ministers and newsmakers, important people who, if I threw their names at you today, you'd probably say, "Huh? Never heard of him. What was he, the Mayor of Moose Jaw or something?"
But politics has its ebb and flow, and in the ebb times I would slip in a column about a bumbling father being raised by two kids. I talked about the things they did, like the time my daughter, then three, stepped out on the front porch in her adorable pink bunny pajamas and let loose with a string of expletives that would make a sailor blush, all directed at a neighbourhood cat who was in the habit of using our rose garden as a private washroom.
(Since I didn't much care one way or the other where a local cat conducted its business, this became the first traceable evidence that perhaps I wasn't the only one who needed to watch his mouth around the kids. Victory was (temporarily) mine!)
After a while, I was asked to spend less time talking about politics and more about real things, like wrestling with home repairs, wrangling kids off to school, grocery shopping for dummies and my own efforts to just once come out on the winning side of an argument with my wife. (Still pending.)
And so I did what my editors asked. I wrote a column a week for ... well, 26 years. I was rarely late and almost never missed one entirely. Earlier this year, when I found myself bundled off to the hospital with a wonky heart, I let one deadline slide past and I'm not sure the stress helped my recovery.
When I do an approximate count of the number of columns I have churned out in that time, I come up with over 1,300. At an average of 800 words per column, that's more than one million words I have sent out into the world.
Really? One million words?
Does anyone have that much to say? More to the point, does anyone have that much to say that is worth listening to?
To be honest, I can't think of a single thing I haven't talked about. Certainly every topic my mother-in-law considered taboo in polite company. Politics? Sex? Religion? Check, check, check and sometimes I could check them all off in one column.
My children have grown up under the watchful eyes of millions (thousands? dozens?) of faithful readers across the country. They have gone to school and had their teacher announce (in front of the class) that he really enjoyed their dad's column about the perils of bra shopping with teenage girls. They are now immune to any effort to embarrass them. (Which doesn't stop me from trying.)
And now, after a million words, it's time to ease up on the gas.
It's not that I've run out of things to say, really. I see that as a renewable resource. It's more that I want to say things in a different way.
I've started directing films. I'm writing songs and poetry and a book that isn't very funny. And sometimes, I'm just writing, and I don't know what it will turn into. What I know it probably won't turn into is a column of 800 words.
So, for now (and everything in our lives is only "for now") I'm going to set the column aside and let it rest. I have enjoyed doing it, and now it's time to do something else. And really, it is exactly that undramatic. Nobody got fired, nobody quit, nobody stormed off in anger. It's just time to let this thing slumber.
I'm grateful to my family and friends, for providing me column material on a week-to-week basis, usually not intentionally. I don't think anyone ever died from embarrassment. And I thank the editors of the papers across the country - including the one you're holding - for the chance to do this column.
But mostly, I thank the people like you - the readers of newspapers from one end of Canada to another - for being my reason to do this column. You are the why, and you always have been.
I'm sure we'll run across one another real soon.
Nils Ling's book "Truths and Half Truths" is a collection of some of hismostmemorable and hilarious columns. To order your copy, send a cheque or money order for $25.00 (taxes, postage and handling included) to RR #9, 747 Brackley Point Road, Charlottetown, PE, C1E 1Z3
