MARK MY WORD: 1998 WAS A BIG YEAR FOR THE TOOTH FAIRY AND SMOKELESS TOBACCO

All things considered, 1998 could have been worse, although I'm not sure Bill and Hillary would see it that way.

The White House sex scandal was front-page news all year, and Monica and Bill gave new meaning to smokeless tobacco.

History buffs and talk-show hosts relished the talk of impeachment and everyone else went shopping.

Locally, the news was much better.

The tooth fairy visited our home on two occasions, much to the delight of our older daughter, 6-year-old Becca, who discovered a small fortune under her pillow.

Bailey, taking a cue from her sister, learned that life is grand when mom and dad let you shop at the dollar store. Bailey, who just turned 3, moved past the diaper stage in 1998. She also moved past the clothing stage, abandoning clothes entirely on a regular basis in our home.

Becca learned that her friends were only a phone call away. In the last half of the year, she spent more time on the home phone than mom or dad. By the time she's a teen-ager, we'll have to have a whole bank of phone lines to keep up with her conversations.

Joni found a home for hundreds of Beanie Babies in 1998. In many cases, it was our home. She made a small fortune on the bean-bags-with-an-attitude. We took the money and our kids to Disney World for a summer vacation.

When we weren't trying to find the kids' shoes, we were trying to keep up with the news. There was plenty of that in 1998.

Union Electric changed its name to AmerenUE, but the utility bills still looked the same.

The city of Cape Girardeau signed on with the Weed and Seed anti-crime initiative and left the rest of us to cut our own grass.

Southeast Missouri State University President Dale Nitzschke canceled condoms as a welcome-back-to-school present much to the dismay of some students who had been counting on a cheap date.

A Virginia man investigated the possibility that a UFO crashed near Cape Girardeau in 1941, giving birth to Talk Radio. Rush Limbaugh was inducted into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame, giving people all the more reason to visit Cape Girardeau and Limbaugh's boyhood hangouts.

Procter and Gamble expanded its paper products plant to include all of Cape Girardeau County.

Gov. Mel Carnahan visited Sikeston for a Klondike Cone.

Not all the news was good. Crime didn't take a holiday.

Methamphetamine was bad news throughout Southeast Missouri.

A burglar had to call for a taxi to get a lift for one of his thefts, proving once again that Cape Girardeau needs mass transit.

For the news challenged, 1998 was a good year because so much of the news lingered on and on.

Cape Girardeau's two hospitals spent the year talking merger. They talked and talked and talked. At year's end, they were going steady, but still there were no wedding bells.

B.W. Harrison gave a ton of stock to the university, which promptly cashed it in so it could buy a former Catholic seminary and turn it into a River Campus.

University officials spent much of the year talking about the River Campus and what they could do if only they had $35.6 million to fix it up.

Voters eventually agreed to a motel-and-restaurant tax plan to help fund it, setting the stage for the university to go to Jefferson City this year and beg for some bucks from lawmakers to develop the downtown site along the Mississippi River as a school for the visual and performing arts.

The Missouri Department of Transportation spent much of the year talking about the potholes in the 15-year highway plan. The agency then scrapped that plan and settled on a five-year agenda of road and bridge improvements, paving the way for continued controversy in 1999.

All of this news is lost on Becca and Bailey. They'd rather watch "Parent Trap" for the millionth time.

With any luck, 1999 will be a good year for the tooth fairy, our family and our community.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.