PERHAPS ALL THE GOOD TOPICS WERE TAKEN

I wrote a regular column of personal commentary in Cape Girardeau for 11 years. During that time, I let loose of roughly 800 pieces of opinion, water-torturing readers with foolishness 16 inches at a time. On May 6, 1992, I wrote a column and then didn't write any more.

What happened?

Maybe all the good topics were taken.

Tom Wolfe explained the dilemma of the modern novelist this way: Fiction is tough because reality is so weird. Nothing a writer conceives can ever match the strangeness of everyday existence.

Had I been writing a column over the last 12 months, there would have been little margin for droll insight on the presidential campaign and resulting new administration. How would you put absurdist spin on Bill Clinton, George Bush or Ross Perot?

If only Clinton hadn't fancied Big Macs and unsightly jogging shorts. If only Bush hadn't flailed his hands about and called his opponent a "bozo." If only Perot hadn't ... well, if only he hadn't been Perot.

All embody parody that not only meets you halfway, but greets you at the door and holds your hand along the way.

The job of writing about these sorts became too easy ... which is to say, too tough. With the folly of life so apparent, with the pickings so easy, committing this to paper seemed redundant.

Of course, there are always real issues to consider, but they suck the fun right out of things, don't they? Besides, so much of life is based not on how things are, but how things seem. Address the perceptions and often you get at the issues and all this strange reality.

The nature of modern celebrity intrigues me. Recent publications bemoan the vanishing of national baseball heroes, not because baseball lacks appealing and greedy athletes, but because baseball lacks appealing and greedy athletes with shoe endorsements.

Who would have guessed a generation ago that a man with a shaved head, short pants and black sneakers would be a flack for companies selling everything from Gatorade to underwear?

Sure, basketball's greatest player pulls on his Hanes one leg at a time like everyone else, but do all young boys in America have to be like Mike?

At least Michael Jordan rose to stardom the old-fashioned way, through sweat and skill.

What's Rodney King done?

His role as a beating victim, courtesy of the Los Angeles Police Department, got more airtime than the Zapruder film, and King, a felon of some note before ascending to video fame, parlayed his victimhood into a place on the celebrity pass list at Dodgers games.

Can an appearance on "Hollywood Squares" be far behind?

Along these lines, it bears noting that erst~while church secretary Jessica Hahn, whose fame was equally hard-won (having succumbed to the clumsy romantic advances of televangelist Jim Bakker), finds her most recent Playboy video number three on the national sales chart. One notch below is "Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland."

Maybe Little Nemo should consider cosmetic surgery.

I bristle when viewing things in this fashion, fearing it probably shows my advancing years. It seems you spend the first 18 or so years of life learning an inventory of rules: say please, say thank you, don't cheat, don't steal, don't belch in public, and so on. Then, you spend the rest of your life learning how people bend or disregard the rules ... and probably growing a little jaded in the process.

Against your wishes, the mind slowly atrophies.

This week, I accompanied my 10-year-old son to Jefferson City, where I hoped he would take some lesson from the work of the General Assembly in the closing days of its session. I fell into a conversation with friends in the legislature, the kind of political talks adults have, about the unfair application of lawmaking rules and the general shenanigans of leadership.

Out of the blue, I was struck by the desire to shield my son from this. I took him to that city to show him how government works, not how it really works. I mean, we can't be Fisher-Price forever, but he's only 10.

Besides a year having gone by, nothing much has changed with me. I still have never ridden in a Mercedes-Benz, though I don't feel burdened or deprived by this fact. I still have never heard "Achy Breaky Heart" from start to finish; again, my life feels full absent this. I have never been mistaken for a handsome movie star; I am comforted by the fact I've never been mistaken for a homely one. (What could ruin your day more than having someone run up in an airport thinking you're Bob Hoskins?)

So here I am again, muddling along as a practicing newspaperman, far outside the reach of positive reinforcement. I'll try to remain upbeat if everyone else will.

And with that disclaimer, I assure myself of plentiful material.