A Barry-Barry Good Writer...

It was 1995 when we were first introduced.

He- a famous witty writer for a heavily circulated newspaper.

Me- an 8th grade brace-faced blonde toting around bags of candy to 'fundraise' for the cheerleading team.

The man who introduced us- my history teacher (or maybe that year the class was titled Civics? Should've been called 'Waste of your Time' but either way its irrelevant). We'll call him Mr. Woods. (Not because I think he would read this blog and figure out it was me writing this but because I can't for the life of me remember his name. And right now ESPN is running for the seventh time a story on Tiger Woods).

Moving on... Mr. Woods was short, scratch that, very short. He had messy (and at least two times a week greasy) brown hair. He wore un-tucked shirts, glasses, and triple knotted his shoe laces. He was the kind of teacher who must've hated teaching us and we were the kind of 8th graders who were... well typical. We didn't care about anything except what happened in the hallways between classes for the five minutes we were allowed to roam among our friends.

So when Mr. Woods read the column of He- a famous witty writer for a heavily circulated newspaper, none of us liked it. Nor did we get it. We were 12 and 13, way too young to appreciate the humor, the witt or the just plain original writing style of the author. Besides if Mr. Woods thought he was cool, then clearly there was no way He was remotely cool.

So today when I picked up the Miami Herald, I was surprised to see that on the cover was an article by who else? He-a famous witty writer for a heavily circulated newspaper. It'd been years since we'd last spoke, but this time I decided to give him another chance. I read it. I got it. And I laughed out loud at least four times.

So, if you're still reading this... I really suggest you go and read this It turns out Mr. Woods was right. Dave Barry is actually really funny.