In 1989 I put a 45 on a dusty turntable in the FM102 music library and listened to a song called Soldier of Love. It was shipped without a label, purposely, so Music Directors wouldn’t be biased before they got a chance to hear it. I declared what I heard would be a hit song, It turned out that the artist was Donny Osmond. And that’s the one and only time I predicted a song would be a hit and was right!Â
My radio station Music Director days lasted only a year or two, and fortunately I had sales and spins charts and the ears of others I trusted to help me navigate waters I was unfamiliar with. Elsewhere in life, I’ve also been right and I’ve been wrong, like everybody. I simply knew that Justin Trudeau would become our Prime Minister, shortly after he took over the leadership of the Liberal party. It wasn’t even that I hoped it would be so. It just seemed like the time was right. But I’ve been wrong about a lot of other things in the past year or so. Allow me to list a couple of them!
Duck Dynasty: I called it wholesome family entertainment, innocent and rootsy. I’ve never hunted a duck, or grown a beard, but the show was an amusing distraction right up until the moment that Phil Robertson spouted his anti-gay and racist remarks, showing who he really was under all of that camo and fuzz. I couldn’t have been more wrong about their motives. Ducks 1, Lisa 0.
Food Insecurity: I meant well when I went on a rant about the foolishness of the phrase, likening it to hunger, when in actual fact, it’s a completely different thing. It’s worrying about where one will get their next meal, and it’s a real, stressful way of life for millions of people in our fat, rich country. We should be ashamed. I know I am.
I didn’t blog about this, but I sure upset someone when I accidentally suggested that the Vatican should pay for repairs to St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. St. Paul’s is Anglican, not Catholic. I was amused by one man’s suggestion that I was being “deliberately offensive”. I was not. But I’ll take it back anyway.
Those are the only ones that come to mind but if you can think of any others, feel free to keep them to yourself. I’ve been writing here every day for more than a decade. There’s bound to be a regret or two. Or seven. It’s better to have blogged and been wrong than never to have blogged at all.