Take a look at the map. Does that shape remind you of South Africa - or of a different South?

Sometimes, I see errors like this, and I think, "Oh, my God, what are the schools turning out these days?" and other times, I think, "Boy, what a brain fart," and think about all the hideous mistakes I've made over the years.

The Story of Bill And Hazel

In a small town, everybody knows every else's business, and we tend to mind our own. Bill, a lineman for the phone company, had been screwing Hazel, a billing clerk there, for the last fifteen years. Surely Bill's wife Sue and Hazel's husband Joe knew about it, since everyone else did, but if they didn't want to do anything about it, why should anyone else raise a ruckus? That would be rude.

Except that Bill and Sue won the grand prize in the Kiwanis sweepstakes, and I ran a picture of the two of them accepting the ham from the Kiwanis chairman. Yeah, that sounds like small potatoes in a city big enough to have a TV station, but in a county of 20,000 people, that's newsworthy enough to run a picture.

And the caption for the picture said the ham had been won by Bill and Hazel Smith instead of Bill and Sue. I knew better. It was a brain fart of the first magnitude. I don't know if it was the biggest mistake I've ever made - I've made some big ones - but it certainly was hurtful. And embarrassing.

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brain fart - chyron - typo - WGN