The Same Old Story

By Tony Kornheiser

Sunday, February 16 1997; Page F01
The Washington Post

I don't like to brag, but my tender column last week about my elderly father's eccentricities
got a huge reader response. People ate it up.

Then they puked.

"You are an intellectual dwarf," wrote an 80-year-old woman from Washington. "I'm glad
you're not my son."

"You are cruel, hurtful and despicable," said a 79-year-old Maryland woman. Then she
called me a name that rhymes with "glass bowl."

An 86-year-old man from Virginia thinks me "insensitive, heartless, humiliating and
demeaning."

And these were some of the nicer responses. Letter writers apparently felt I was unkind in
general to old people and in particular to my father, whose eyesight and hearing might not be
what they used to be, but is still a human being deserving of respect, affection and dignity.
This made me feel terrible. I don't want readers to dislike me, but more important, I love my
father and was devastated that people would think me a bad son. The first thing I did was
telephone my dad in Florida, to make sure he wasn't offended. This is our conversation,
verbatim.

"Hello?" he said.

"Hi, Dad, it's Tony."

"WHAT? WHAT? HELLO?"

"It's me, Tony. How are you?"

"WHAT??? I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

"Dad?"

"LOOK, I DON'T WANT ANY." Click.

Ha ha ha. Good gracious, people. Relax. This is a humor column. I meant no disrespect to
my dad, or to elderly people in general. I have enormous respect for the elderly. Sometimes,
they shrink so much you can save a few bucks and bring them on the plane as carry-on.

Stop it, Tony. This is no laughing matter.

It isn't?

Well, actually it IS pretty funny when real old people try to use modern technology. Like
when they call a stereo a "hi-fi," or even a "Victrola"! Isn't that GREAT? Also sometimes they
get really comical-looking moles.

Hold on, Mr. Italics. Now you go too far. Even I wouldn't make fun of people's infirmities.

Oh, right. Like I suppose you never wrote a thing about fat guys shvitzing like lawn
sprinklers?

Maybe we should end this dialogue right here.

Fine with me. So what are you going to fill the rest of the column with? You going to do some
actual research and reporting, or just snap open the paper and find some stupid news story to
make fun of, like you always do?

I am looking at a story about a scientific study that cautions you are four times as likely to get
in an accident when you're talking on your car phone than when you're not.

Gosh, I wonder why.

Might this be why airline pilots, don't, for example, play Game Boy during takeoff?

You know, I'll bet if someone did a study he'd find that people who stick their head into a
lion's mouth are four times as likely to get mauled than people watching the same thing on TV.

The article said the driving hazard associated with talking on a car phone is similar to the
hazard associated with drinking and driving. So I guess the last thing anybody would want to
see coming up fast in the rearview mirror is Oksana Baiul holding a Nokia 480.

The study was conducted by examining crash reports and cell phone records from hundreds
of Canadian drivers -- all of whom were speeding to get to the hockey game.

I called Man About Town Chip Muldoon, since he lives in Los Angeles, the car phone capital
of the world. Routinely, people in L.A. have two-phone cars. They have car faxes. So I
expected him to tell me that the streets of L.A. were littered with windshield glass from
people smashing their cars while talking to their agents or aroma therapists. But he said, to the
contrary, that car phone wrecks are less of a problem in L.A., because
everybody there has
a car phone answering machine so they can screen their calls.

The explosion in car phones has been ridiculous. Just a few years ago the only people who
had car phones were rich guys driving Mercedeses; you could tell from those squiggly
antennas that look like dinosaur IUDs. Now every slob in a Taurus has one.

Sometimes you can't see the driver's head. You just see a pair of withered hands. But you
know they're talking on the phone because you can hear them, three cars away. They're
talking real loud. They're saying, "EDNA, DID YOU READ THAT COLUMN BY TONY
KORNHEISER? WHAT A PUTZ HE IS . . . "


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