Tough Day for the Army: Stories

Corrections and Clarifications

53 Corrections and Clarifications The caption for the photo of yesterday’s city council meeting (Section 1, Page 2) misidentified Lawrence Billings as Horance Willings. We regret the error. In Wednesday’s lead editorial, we declared that Sheriff Jack Seager is an ineffectual public servant whose slipshod leadership is plunging our town into a death spiral of crime and corruption. We regret this because we actually think, as sheriffs go, he’s doing a pretty good job. And when you mention the words “crime” and “this town” together people generally laugh and say, “What crime?” and “Where?” What we meant to say is word has it that Sheriff Seager has a really small dick. Now that we think about it, we also regret that we were unable to hit the ball to the right side in order to move the runner from first into scoring position during the big state playoff game all those years ago. That time we said we would set the TiVo for your favorite show and it must’ve recorded the wrong channel, or the time was messed up or something? We regret that. The thing is, we thought that Horance Willings was an awfully strange name, but frankly, we were quite taken with it. Still and all, we regret the error. Speaking of high school, we regret staring at Julie Norman’s chest. We also shouldn’t let the recyclables pile up like that in the corner of the kitchen. It’s kind of messy and attracts bugs. We regret this. We regret that during the undressing period of our noontime coupling with Mrs. Seager, consumed as we were by our furtive passion, we flung our underpants all the way under the clothes dresser, which 54 made them very hard to find when Sheriff Seager unexpectedly came home for lunch. Remember Lawrence Billings? Turns out he prefers Larry. We should have asked. It smarts when you compound one error with another. It really does. We regret this. Actually, what we regret is getting caught staring at Julie Norman’s chest. It made us look like a pervert. We have some very small regrets over failing to read the assembly directions for that prefabricated bookshelf. We regret also that we spent so much time searching for the underwear , rushing around the Seager bedroom in the altogether. We should have ditched them and gone commando. Precious moments were lost there for sure. Regrets. In our defense, we are right-handed and were given nothing but hard cheese on the inner half of the plate. Nevertheless, regrets are ours. Failure to recycle belies a kind of careless attitude toward the larger needs of the community. We wish we could get it together on this front. Shoving our foot through the fly of our boxers once the boxers were finally located was also a problem. What we mean is that we regret that first we referred to Larry Billings as Horance Willings, then compounded the error by calling him “Lawrence” when it is now clear that only his mother calls him “Lawrence .” We don’t regret that his name is Larry or that making errors leads to regrets. Errors should have consequences, and while we count ourselves lucky when consequences don’t result from our errors, we accept them when they do. That guy was all-conference. First team. Veins ran down his forearm . If we were supposed to bunt, we would have bunted, but the signs were to swing away with an eye toward hitting to the right side. If there’s a regret, it’s that we didn’t back out of the batter’s box, call time, and clarify things with the third-base coach, stressing our doubts about our ability to get good wood on this guy’s stuff. 55 We’ve never told our father we loved him, never felt the rasp of his whiskers on our lips. We regret this. We’re grateful for Mrs. Julie Seager’s laughter as we searched for the underwear. Given the inherent franticness and tension of the situation , that she sat up in the bed with the sheet only half-covering her breasts and held her hand over her mouth as she did the aforementioned laughing really seemed to take the edge off, despite the heavy tread of her husband’s, Sheriff Seager’s, trooper boots on the stairs. Regarding the bookshelf, we agree that...