The McCollumn - 12/28: "An open letter to whomever broke into my house Sunday"

‘Twas two days before Christmas,

And all through my house

Not a creature was stirring

... Except for a louse.

Yes, dear readers, some time Sunday between noon and 2 p.m., someone (or ones) broke into my beloved McCollum Cottage and absconded with several small electronics items in tow.

They took it upon themselves to wait until after my petsitter had left, kicking in my front door and helping themselves to the relatively scant pickings available in my home.

When I returned home from Anniston Sunday, I noticed the front door was ajar due to the abnormal amount of light in the living room, and from there was treated to bouts of anger and sadness for the remainder of the day.

Here at Christmas, when we are all supposed to be filled with the milk of human kindness and are told to feel compassion and goodwill toward our fellow man, some low-life had made off with my stuff.

Rage was the natural first emotion.

I wanted to get my hands on these turkeys and beat their skulls in with a spiked baseball bat, a’la Raekwon the Chef (one of my favorite members of the Wu-Tang Clan).

At the very least, I wanted to be able to kick them in the nads and watch them writhe around on the ground in pain for a bit.

Not very Christmasy, I’ll grant you.

As the afternoon progressed into evening, however, my perspective on the ordeal somewhat softened.

So, to the person or persons who robbed my house Sunday, I have just a few words for you, from me:

Dear robber or robbers,

I don’t know what made you choose McCollum Cottage to rob, but, as you can see by what you made off with, there really wasn’t much to steal.

See, I’m a journalist. We don’t make much money, so I try to live simply and within my means (even if I have to borrow the money to do it). No expensive electronics, no fancy artwork - just a no-frills country existence in a house that exists largely as it has since it was built in the 1950s.

I don’t have cable or internet out there; there aren’t any lines to run to the house. My Internet was through a small Verizon Wireless card, but you took that, and I cancelled it yesterday. It’s of no use to you now.

Within the laptop you stole, you may find the first disk of Season 6 of ‘Will and Grace.’ There are some good episodes on that disk. I hope you enjoy them; Harry Connick, Jr., guest stars in a few. If you find yourself not wanting the disk, feel free to slip it back into my mailbox. It’s going to be a pain in the butt to replace just that one disk, and I don’t think you really want it.

Thank you for not harming my dog Fitz. You may not have even known he was there, but I was glad to see that nothing had been done to him. Had you harmed him, I might have had to hunt you down like Liam Neeson does whenever someone takes one of his kids in a movie. The result would not have been pleasant - for you or me.

I’m not sure why you felt the need to rob my house. If it’s because you’re down on your luck and need money, well ... don’t we all. Robbing a low-income person like me isn’t going to get you there, though.

None of the items you stole are pawnable.

Half of them don’t even work properly.

If you’re giving them as gifts, you may have difficulty explaning why they seem so well-used and old. Good luck on those explanations.

I began my afternoon Sunday feeling mostly angry with you, but, now, in the light of a new day, I feel sorry for whatever decisions you made that have led you down this path.

Whoever you are, something tells me that your momma didn’t raise you to be a thief, and I dare say she’d be disappointed in your actions in this.

In a season where we’re supposed to show love and kindness to one another, you have shown greed and malice.

I want you to know I’m praying for you.

I hope God will show you that the path you are on will only lead to more destruction, more sadness and nothing of the goodness or light of life.

I hope you are able to turn your life around and are able to get back some of your humanity and a spirit of kindness.

You may have broken into my home and stolen from me both items and a sense of comfort in my own home, but the Devil is stealing your soul from you, and that’s more worrisome to me.

Just ask on Jesus’ name and beg His forgiveness.

Do that, and you will have mine as well.

May God find you and make you His. That’s my Christmas wish for you.

Sincerely,

Cliff McCollum

The McCollumn - 12/14: 'Sometimes, you wanna go where everybody knows your name'

Years ago, it was the grey building known as ‘Charlie’s Fundrinkery.’

Then, if memory serves, it was a pet store for a brief amount of time.

But, to me, the now vacant, lonely green building on Samford Avenue in Opelika will always be only one thing to me: the site of “Grown Folks Blues and More,” or, as the Bar Food Night Crew preferred to call it, simply “Miss Nancy’s.”

We discovered it completely by accident.

While I had driven by hundreds of times throughout my life, I had never felt an overwhelming urge to stop at that particular establishment; being the child of teetotaler Southern Baptists, bars were still somewhat of an anathema, especially bars in my hometown.

The rules of Bar Food Night and the goading of Drs. Adam Cooner and Jordan Gentry were enough to get me in the door.

The kindness, laughter and happiness exuded by the staff and patrons of Grown Folks (and Shorty’s awesome karaoke set-up) were what kept bringing us back time after time.

The patroness, Ms. Nancy, was always ready with a stiff drink and some loving words of wisdom - as well as an ever-present basket of fried okra, a necessary staple for our table.

She’d ask about school, our love lives and anything else she could think of that would matter. The Vets-in-Waiting would talk of classes and surgeries; I, of city council and school board meetings.

Her sister, Ms. Tootsie, would always be the first up for karaoke, singing her staple - the Luther Vandross version of the classic “A House is Not a Home.”

A few more Pink Flamingos (for me, at least), a fish platter and then we’d all be up in front of the bar and its regulars, belting out anything from Sinatra (me) to David Allen Coe (Cooner) and even Weird Al’s “White and Nerdy” (Jordan).

We’d have our fill and then slowly amble out, always sure to get a hug and parting bit of advice from Miss Nancy.

“Smile, baby,” she’d always say to me. “You know you’re too blessed to be stressed.”

Those days are gone now.

Due to a dispute with the building’s owner, Blues and More isn’t there any more, leaving another empty space in the heart of all of us who love our quirky local watering holes.

We were occasional visitors in the world at Grown Folks; there were folks there who came every week, sat at the same places, did the same things and talked to the same folks.

What happens to the cast of regulars when an iconic place just up and closes?

Do they all matriculate to some other stop, attempting to blend in with established regulars at another joint, or do they just grab a bottle from the ABC store and stick close to home?

We all need a place where we can go and just ... well ... be, a place free of judgment, pretense or shame.

We want our version of “Cheers,” that place “where everybody knows your name” - who you are, what you do and why none of that really matters.

When you’re at that bar, you’re just another face in the crowd. Who is less important than Why, as all are there to have a nice drink and forget about their troubles in the world outside.

“Grown Folks” was that place for me, the Vet School Crew and countless others who we tried to spread “the gospel of Ms. Nancy” to.

No bartender will ever dispense wit and wisdom the way Ms. Nancy did.

No taste will ever match the crispy fried okra dipped in the slightest hint of ketchup.

No beverage will ever equal the simultaneous potency and sweetness of the strawberry-flavored Pink Flamingo - and nor will I ever be able to order a pink drink in any other bar without raised eyebrows from others.

Goodbye, Grown Folks, and thank you for everything you allowed me to see and learn.

Bars may come and go,  but the memories and experiences we had in them will last a lifetime. Raise your glasses, readers; here’s cheers to the end of an Opelika institution.

The McCollumn - 12/7: "Our seniors deserve better than this"

Author's note: This week's column makes more sense if read after the article on which it is based. My visit to the Boykin Center was equal parts joyful and heartbreaking, and I am thankful to the Auburn Adult Day Center for letting me share their story.
Read the article, then read the column, please.

http://opelikaobserver.com/community/902-state-budget-cuts-could-soon-close-area-adult-day-center

Marian Johnson and Raymond Pogue smile as

they await their lunch at the Auburn Adult Day Center.

Thanks to budget cuts from our state’s legislature and governor, 28 adult care centers across the state, including our own located at Boykin Center in Auburn, will be shut down by the end of February 2013.

18 senior adults here in Lee County will go from having a loving, familial environment filled with attention and care from trained professionals to being left alone to fend for themselves all day, with only the television to keep them company.

It only takes around $160,000 a year to fully fund the adult care center here - and only $2 million to keep all the centers running statewide, but our current budget apparently doesn’t prioritize the needs of more than 400 lower-income seniors.

Nevermind that, at $26 a day, the programs are far cheaper than the nursing home alternatives that most of these seniors will be placed into.

Thanks to advances in medicine and technology, we’re all living longer, and we ourselves could end up in programs like this one - but only if they still exist.

I encourage all of you to visit the Boykin Center to talk to the patrons and to see the happiness it brings to their lives.

For many of the people there, that center is a staple in their life, and the other patrons are de facto family members.

Go play some dominoes, help Mr. Pogue with one of his word puzzles and see what a remarkable difference a little care and attention can bring to someone’s life - and then let Montgomery know we need this vital service.

The McCollumn - 11/30: "Godspeed NASA - you’ll probably need it"

Statistics and common sense tell us newspaper readers trend older demographically, and our paper proves those expectations, which is why I’m jealous of a number of you dear readers.

You, my slightly older friends, got to live the excitement of the “Space Race.”

You looked on in intrigue (and in horror) in 1957, when the USSR launched Sputnik , the first man-made satellite to orbit the Earth.

Could America catch up, or were we headed for a Soviet domination of outer space?

Five years later, in 1962, with a parting of “Godspeed John Glenn,” Glenn orbited the Earth aboard Friendship 7, the first American to do so. We were, apparently, catching up. 

The fledgling National Aeronautics and Space Administration, with its scores of engineers, physicists and other scientists from around the country collaborated to create some of the most amazing achievements man has seen, to not only eclipse the Soviet program, but to land a man on the moon.

And so they did, with Neil Armstrong treading where no one had tread before.

At one time, NASA spending affected every state in our union - and we all worked together so that our nation could both prosper and “win” the race.

There were subsequent Apollo missions and several others that came after them, but the public didn’t seem to take much note any more.

Oh sure, if something went horribly wrong, we all noticed (Apollo 13, the Challenger disaster), but, by and large, space had lost its allure.

We’d been to the moon, we’d won the race; what more did we need to learn from space?

By the time I came around in 1986 (the same year as the Challenger disaster), space wasn’t cool.

Most kids wanted to be a doctor or a vet, while some held out hopes to be able to “explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

I was one of those kids, with a telescope and star maps, gazing toward the heavens in search of something more.

At Opelika Middle School, I was blessed to be a part of the “Radio Jupiter” project, and got to listen as sound waves bounced back and forth between our world and the Great Planet.

I was even prouder to learn that we had an Opelikan astronaut - Jim Voss, Class of ‘68. Someone from here had done it before, so why couldn’t we?

NASA kept sending rockets and astronauts into “the final frontier,” but space was no longer alluring, and deficit hawks across the nation began to question why so much money was needed.

Now, we have no more space shuttles, and our astronauts have to hitch rides into space with other nations, even with the Russians we feared for so long.

Programs are seeing their funding cut, and we’re seeing severe job losses and economic depression come to towns who built themselves up with aerospace jobs. If there are no more space shuttles to build parts for, why keep all those people on the payroll?

Educational programs and opportunities to help inspire our youth have also declined, and we see the younger generation slip further away from having interest, or even awareness of, space.

I worry that if funding cuts and program cancellations continue, this nation could dig itself into a hole it will not be able to leap from. We could be sowing the seeds now for a loss of American dominance in outer space. After all, we’re already losing this generation.

We have always been spurred by a belief in American exceptionalism, that this nation is not only among the best and brightest, but the actual best.

By not continuing to invest in our nation’s space program, we run the risk of finding ourselves lacking the tools to inspire the next generation of engineers, astrophysicists and even astronauts themselves, to say nothing of the scores of other children who simply gain a spirit of exploration that could translate into innovations and developments in hundreds of other fields.

By investing in a renewed spirit of discovery, we could see untold dividends in our children’s generation. By exploring and cataloging other planets, we learn more about our own planet - the whats, whys, and hows of the Earth itself.

By venturing out further into our universe, we find an ever-expanding cosmos of stars and other celestial bodies that we never knew existed and we hold out the hope that, perhaps, we are not alone.

An investment in our space program is not just throwing money into outer space; it is a commitment to continuing to support the ideals of exploration and creativity that helped make this nation what it is today.

NASA and its programs represent the best American ideals, our belief that through knowledge, education and hard work, we can do anything we can set our minds to - whether its putting a man on the moon or even kicking off to Mars.

So, again, I’m jealous of a number of you.

You got to grow up when space was cool - when knowledge and creativity were celebrated.

You don’t know how lucky you were. You really don’t.

The McCollumn -11/16: "'Redneckognizing' the problem"

I don’t know when it was that we, as a nation, completely lost our minds, but I feel the need to begin by blaming what was once called The Learning Channel, dear old TLC.

What was once a channel with programming about interesting health issues and the occasional home redesign show now regularly features all sorts of oddities (and, no, I don’t mean the Sarah Palin reality show.)

There are the almost-always morbidly obese women on “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant,” who thought their forthcoming offspring was just an exceptionally large, painful bowel movement.

There’s “Little People, Big World,” which I always thought was meant to make people feel sympathetic to the plight of dwarves, but I generally come away from that show thinking that the dwarf dad is really a jerk - regardless of his height.

Then, there’s the most terrifying of them all, the show that makes me worry about how far ‘round the bend we’ve gone as a people: “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.”

The show, which attracted more ratings than Mitt Romney’s RNC speech and tied Bill Clinton’s speech at the DNC, features  seven-year-old self-proclaimed “beauty queen” Alana, a somewhat chubby child who is prone to spout instantly sickening and captivating catch-phrases like “You better redneckognize” and “A dolla makes me holla, honey boo boo.”

What is cute for eight seconds becomes horrifying over eight episodes.

This behavior is not only rewarded, but supported by Alana’s family, a truly bizarre cast of characters that makes those nice backwoods people from “Deliverance” seem downright folksy and Mayberryesque.

Family game night can include the staple of “Guess Whose Breath,” where a family member is blindfolded and the others breathe in their face until they can guess who it is by the olfactory clues.

This is just the base level of crazy that goes on the ratings flagship “Honey Boo Boo,” where there is no such word as shame.

Why is that a good thing?

Isn’t some shame a necessary thing to keep you from doing ridiculously impulsive and stupid things?

And, I suppose, most importantly: when did sheer ignorance become a valid point of view?

The spotlight of fame has become a beacon for infamy, as “reality television” has truly only shown us the seedy underbelly of what we’ve become as a society.

We cheapen the institution of marriage by shows like “The Bachelor,” “Joe Millionaire,” or the grandfather of them all, “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?” We encourage backstabbing and sneakiness as necessary human traits in shows like “Survivor” and “The Apprentice.” We even encourage the voyeurism and lack of privacy our age is known for in shows like “Big Brother” and “Glass House.”

I’m not yet sure what the “Honey Boo Boo” means for us and our society in these perilous times, but, just in case, we should at least “redneckognize” the problem is here, and it ain’t leavin’ any time soon.

Supplemental McCollumn - The Biennial Congressional Endorsement

W. Fred Woods: Write-In Candidate

for the AL 3rd Congressional District

Every two years, voters across this great land of ours go to their polling places to cast their votes on a plethora of candidates and issues vital and important to their respective locales.

This year is no different. In addition to the attention-grabbing presidential race, voters here in Lee County will cast their ballots on statewide offices and amendments that could preserve the Forever Wild program, limit legislative pay and stop the annexation of small towns by their larger neighbors (to name a few).

We’re also obliged to pick between two candidates for our U.S. congressional district, where the Hon. Mike Rogers (R-Anniston) will take on Lee County Commissioner John Andrew Harris (D-Opelika) to defend the seat Rogers has held since 2003.

In the last election, feeling that neither candidate deserved the voters’ support, I endorsed former OHS athletic director and head football coach Spence McCracken for the job. The platform of “God bless America and God bless the Dogs” garnered the coach a few dozen write-in votes (more than I expected, to be honest).

This year, I find myself in a similar situation - neither Rogers nor Harris seems completely deserving of the job that they seek - and am forced to come up with another write-in candidate who could better serve the needs and desires of the AL 3rd.

After much prayer and soul searching (and blindfolding myself to throw a dart at index cards with potential candidate names on them), I believe I’ve found the guy:

William Fred Woods, editor of the Opelika Observer and a stalwart employee of the United States Department of Agriculture for decades.

Here’s a bit of bio, courtesy of an article written on Woods by Ann Cipperly:

“Woods’ diverse career included being an extension specialist, researcher, a policy advisor for both U.S. and foreign government and a national program leader for public policy for research and extension education. Over the years, he received many honors including the SAEA Lifetime Achievement Award, the K.J. Hildreth Award for Career Achievement in Public Policy Education and the Woods Award for Excellence in Public Policy.”

Read that last part again: The Woods Award for Excellence in Public Policy, as in the W. Fred Woods Award. They named the award for excellence after him; enough said, right?

Woods has served with distinction in Armenia after the fall of Communism, helping the Armenian government create and develop its agricultural policy.

He's helped craft portions of our tax code, and once even had to help IRS officials figure out how to implement a tax credit for farmers Woods helped develop.

He’s spent his entire career working to help bridge the gap between policy and practice, and has the ability to explain complex documents and figures as if he were discussing the latest sports scores.

I’m proud to get to work with the man every single day, and I know that if we send Woods back to Washington, we’ll be sending a man who can cut through the bullcrap and idiocy that currently plagues our nation’s capitol.

He wouldn’t put up with falsities or misinformation from congressional colleagues; he speaks truth and expects others to act the same.

He’s worked across the aisles for years in his roles with the USDA, and could help bring a much-needed spirit of bipartisan cooperation back to the “people’s chamber.”

Of course, when I asked Woods if he would mind being the McCollum-backed write-in this year, he demurred and pulled a William T. Sherman/Calvin Coolidge/Lyndon Johnson move, saying “If drafted, I will not run; if nominated, I will not accept; if elected, I will not serve.”

Well...

Even if Woods stays true to his threat, I’m left to genuinely believe even no representation whatsoever would be better than the choices we have.

Fred Woods for Congress: Let’s Cut the Crap and Work Together.

Works for me.

McCollumn Classic - The Krispy Kreme Doughnut Dilemma

Opelika is a wonderful town. I really cannot say that enough. I’ve had the distinct pleasure to be raised here, and I feel blessed for it. 

However, Opelika is not perfect. We do not live in some sort of blessed utopia or the proverbial “shining city upon a hill.” 

There is only one major thing Opelika lacks that keeps it from achieving true greatness: its lack of a Krispy Kreme Doughnut shop. 

Truly, there are three no more glorious words in the English language as the ones that flash in that soul-piercing red neon sign, as if written in the handwriting of the gods themselves for us mere mortals to be honored to see: “Hot Doughnuts Now.”

 I can’t tell you how many times I’ve nearly caused multiple car collisions because of that sign. 

I love Tiger Town and the many stores it has brought to this area. For example, I don’t know how I’ve lived this long without the 24-hour Kroger. 

Every time I’ve heard about a new expansion at Tiger Town, my pulse has quickened with anticipation, a longing to hear a Krispy Kreme was coming our way. 

I would get myself to a mental place where I could be prepared to preemptively amputate my feet in an attempt to combat the diabetes I would be sure to develop. I’ve even got Wilford Brimley and the good people at Liberty Medical on speed dial so I can get my testing supplies delivered right to my door. 

And, every time, I’ve been disappointed, disheartened and disturbed when I would hear a Krispy Kreme would not be here. 

You can only get your hopes up so many times before you begin to feel defeated by the whole thing. 

I’ve talked to city council members and folks at the Opelika Chamber of Commerce, and they’ve all said the same thing. 

Krispy Kreme headquarters has decreed we are too close to Columbus and Montgomery to support a store of our own. 

I find that statement to be as absurd as it is incorrect, and wrote Krispy Kreme a fairly strongly-worded letter saying something to that effect. To this day, I’ve not heard back from them. 

Seriously, the sales to First Baptist Church on a Sunday alone could keep them in business, and I know full well that it isn’t just Baptists who love those doughnuts. 

To me, it is easy to mathematically prove Opelika deserves a Krispy Kreme. 

Krispy Kreme doughnuts are the best. Opelika deserves the best. Therefore, by the transitive property (or one of those math things that Gloria Campbell tried desperately to drill into my brain in high school), Opelika deserves a Krispy Kreme. 

There is nothing in the world quite like one of those hot, glazed doughnuts. 

Honestly, they are so soft you really don’t even have to chew them; you just sort of inhale them and let the warmth spread over you like a beloved family quilt. 

Few things in this world match the happiness of doughnut happiness. 

I know some of you love these doughnuts just as much as I do. 

I’ve seen you in line after Opelika football games at Montgomery’s Crampton Bowl. We all laugh and share coupons as we wait patiently for a few boxes of those wonderful treats. 

Just think, if we had a store like Montgomery, we could do that every Friday. So, what do we do? How do we let the suits at Krispy Kreme HQ know that we mean business? 

Write a letter, send an e-mail, make a phone call. 

These are all good things to do, for a start. I propose a more drastic action, one of those “cut off the nose to spite the face” kind of deals. 

We must boycott all forms of Krispy Kreme found in our local grocery stores, gas stations and other sundry locations. 

We must resist the siren’s call of the creme-filled and brave the straits of the cruller and the chocolate-glazed. 

We know coffee cake and danish aren’t as good, but we will stick to them and remain steadfast in our resolve. 

We will tell Krispy Kreme they can keep their day-old goods from Columbus and Montgomery. 

We will tell them we will only eat a doughnut that comes from our town, so they’d better hurry up and build one.

 If we hit them in the pocketbook, they’ll fall like the walls of Jericho. 

I know we can do this, Opelika. We are capable of great things when we work together. 

Imagine what a wonderful day it will be when we can all stand in the queue on that opening day, laughing and bantering as we wait for the doors to open. 

We will all fill ourselves full of golden fried goodness and that highly addictive coffee. 

We will be a step closer to true greatness. We deserve greatness, don’t we? 

But, you read it here first, if I am not at the head of the line that wonderful day, there will be trouble. 

Consider yourselves warned. 

The McCollumn - 10/26: "Kudzu bugs and Tippi Hedren"

My paternal grandmother, Janie Ruth McCollum, was an interesting individual.

Set in her ways and more stubborn than a team of mules, she knew full well what she wanted to do and the way she wanted to do it, and no one, not even her well-meaning sons, could convince her otherwise.

As a child, she was my primary babysitter, as my parents would drop me off at McCollum Cottage with little worry that woman who raised Homer and Tank would have no issue whatsoever with bookish, quiet Cliff. Little did they know it wasn’t me they had to worry about.

While “Maw Maw” was an excellent caregiver and sitter, she didn’t always possess the best kid filters when it came to television and movies, letting me and my cousins watch things we never should have watched at our young ages.

Some were funny - Cousin Katie and I still laugh about the fake Saturday Night Live commercial for the “Love Toilet” and how she tried to convince a young Cliff to try to call the number on the screen to order one for Maw Maw. She then began to beat me savagely as I got to the phone and started pressing numbers.

However, some of Maw Maw’s entertainment choices were much too scary for young Cliff - and I was reminded of such an incident earlier this week.

Normally this time of year, McCollum Cottage is riddled what I’ve dubbed “the cutest infestation of all time” - the annual ladybug pilgrimage to the trees and bushes that surround my home.

I’ve noticed swarms of small bugs around the house, and thought my old friends had come back to visit once more.

Wrong. Dead wrong.

Horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad wrong.

Instead of my usual red and black cohorts, the estate of McCollum Cottage now finds itself overrun with a pest of a different color.

Kudzu bugs - the murky brown, foul-smelling beetles our county agent Chuck Browne warned us about in his column last week - have overtaken everything, from the front yard’s pecan tree to the poke salad bushes near the chimney remnants next door.

Crushing them to bits only brings a momentary satisfaction, as the horrid odor emitted upon their expiration is akin to the aromatic enjoyments of asparagus-laced urine and industrial oven-cleaning solvents.

The little buggers have begun to swarm now, making entering and exiting my home a real battle during the daylight hours.

The air is thick with the winged pests, and I’m forced to run and swing my arms wildly about to avoid the bugs finding safe passage on my personage.

I pray no one’s seen me do this; I imagine to passers-by I’d look not unlike a schizophrenic.

As I was saying goodbye to Friend of Cliff Kendra Carter as she departed Sunday afternoon from the house, we were forced to do the same air-slapping insanity to keep the bugs from getting in her car.

“Makes us look like Tippi Hedren, doesn’t it,” I said to Kendra before she was forced to bolt.

Tippi Hedren, indeed.

There was an almost immediate flashback to an 8-year-old Cliff sitting on Maw Maw’s sofa, watching a special presentation of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.”

I watched with terror as despite her wild gesticulations and screams, Hedren’s character was savagely mauled and attacked by the titular winged menaces. They didn’t kill her, but they came darn close.

I’ve been afraid of birds ever since. I even keep my distance from caged birds - just in case they decide to lose it and go straight for the whites of my eyes.

Since that Saturday night almost two decades ago, I’ve found myself determined to not leave the mortal realm in that fashion -  and while I always thought “Hedrenning” was not nor would it ever be a positively-connoted verb, I’m beginning to change my tune.

Save ordering a beekeeper’s suit from online or calling in tactical air support to gas the blighters out, I find myself left with few options other than the 20-yard Hedren Dash to and from the car each day.

While I hope that the recent cool streak will help rid us of this troublesome bane, I urge you all to maintain constant vigilance and be aware of your own outdoor surroundings.

I’ve received word from the Opelika Order of Geezers that their headquarters on Marvyn Parkway, on the opposite side of town from my beloved McCollum Cottage, is similarly infested with kudzu bugs - as the gentlemen can’t even take a much-needed smoke break without coming back covered in tiny brown beetles.

Be prepared, dear readers.

We all thought the kudzu plant itself was a horrible sickness, but the kudzu bug cure may be worse.

So, keep your eyes peeled on the horizon for flickers of small insect wings.

Check your garden’s leaves and stems for barely moving brown dots.

And, keep your arms free and available to flail about, if necessary.

“Hedrenning” might may you look like a fool or a mental patient, but it will help you beat off the bugs ... sort of.

The McCollumn - 9/21: "Students with special needs deserve exceptions to high-stakes testing"

During last week’s Opelika City School board meeting, I was privy to assistant superintendent Brenda Rickett’s explanation of the system’s recent Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) results, those ultra-important percentages from the state that are allegedly meant to tell us whether our system’s schools are up to snuff.

It seemed that this year’s reading scores were not up to their proper levels across the system; though the percentage of children passing these high-stakes tests had risen over the last few years, it had not risen enough to please the educational gods in Montgomery.

In two cases, Opelika missed a passing grade on these tests because children who fell into the “special education” subgroup failed to score high enough of some of their tests.

This gave me pause.

“We’re making special education students take these tests?” I said to myself. “Seriously?”

Having known several special education teachers over the years (and having worked with students with special needs myself over the years), I found it downright mindboggling the state of Alabama would want to give high-stakes tests to those students.

We call these kids “students with special needs” because each of them is special and each of them has needs different from every other student.

The nature of high-stakes testing is meant to homogenize and blend together students into that almighty percentage, that simple pass or fail number, and seems to go against the style of individualized education and attention that is the spirit of the special education movement.

In your average special education class, you find students who run the gamut of disabilities, from developmental impairments to intellectual issues, from autism to Down’s syndrome and from specific learning barriers to kids with severe speech and language concerns.

Special education teachers have to spend their time catering to each of these wildly differing students’ needs, making sure they can understand the state standard mandated instructional materials in front of them using the methods that these teachers know works best for those individual students.

Sometimes, it’s beyond difficult for these teachers and aides to fulfill this task.

When you’ve got a pupil who, for all intents and purposes, thinks on the level of a six-year-old, it can be a Herculanean task to get that student to sit still long enough to try to get him/her to learn a ninth grade science standard like the names and locations of the planets, much less getting him/her to retain the material.

If daily lessons are a struggle, I shudder to think of the burden those students face when it comes time for these high-stakes standardized tests.

While it seems all well and good to want to hold every child to high standards, to want them to succeed at the best level they can, unfortunately not every student can meet those challenges, and what’s left is sadness and frustration on the part of teachers, parents and our friends with special needs.

Often, these educational policies are designed and mandated by politicians and bureaucrats who seldom see the inside of a regular classroom (outside of the occasional election year photo-ops), and seldom visit our special education classrooms at all.

Instead of forcing these students to have state-mandated standards and plans of study hammered into their brains, why can’t we take a more common sense approach and give these kids the sort of hands-on vocational and life training they’ll actually need once they leave school and enter the real world.

Instead of teaching them the planets, why not show them how to read and interpret restaurant menus, so they can order for themselves when they get hungry.

Instead of talking about valence electrons and balancing chemical equations, let’s teach them chemistry they’ll use in their everyday lives, showing them what household cleaning products not to mix together so they won’t cause accidents that may hurt themselves or others.

Instead of complex algebraic equations, let’s show them how to count out correct change from a cash register, useful basic math skills we could all benefit from learning.

Our students with special needs are great kids with the potential to lead normal, fulfilling lives that they themselves can manage and control.

But, they can only succeed in this task if those who control our schools’ curriculums can recognize a simple fact: those high-stakes test scores they revere so much only tell them one thing about our schools - how good kids are at taking those tests.

Until they take off their testing blinders, all of this is just a moot point.

We all want our kids to grow and thrive as best they can, but shoving testing at these kids isn’t the right way to produce excellent results, and, quite frankly, it never will be.