Columnist Scott Dickensheets: The clock is ticking … the column is waiting

Scott Dickensheets

Tuesday, Feb. 3, 1998 | 9:51 a.m.

Imagine him sitting in his Big Gulp-strewn home office, fingers twitching above his computer keyboard, awaiting only a few bioelectric impulses from the brain before commencing his column. His brain, meanwhile, is impatiently awaiting the arrival -- from whatever ether in which they're born -- of a column topic. Anything will do; it's getting late, every apocalyptic tick of the clock nudging him closer to the unholy nadir of the columnist's craft: the column about being unable to write a column.

Nooooo! What about the time his 5-year-old tried to shave, ha ha, there ought to be a kids-do-the-darndest-things column there, right? Or a wacky riff on cleaning his garage -- wait, done that already. No charming domestic foibles, either; he curses himself for deciding not to bathe the dogs that day. And thus the scribe comes face to face with the first rule of his profession: If you can't stand the heat, get out of the column.

8:43 p.m.

He's got it: Why not play ketchup? "Have you noticed that fast-food places seem to be reluctant to give you ketchup?" someone had asked him recently. Rule No. 2: If people are talking about it, it's a column. Therefore, yes, by golly, he has noticed. Just last week at Carl's Jr., in fact. After the uniformed girl brought out his tray of food she asked, "Do you want some ketchup?" Yes, he replied, and she dropped a measly two packets onto his tray. Not nearly enough! He's noticed it at several restaurants.

He feels his dander rising nicely, that familiar, tingly surge at the base of his spine. Is there some sort of worldwide tomato-products shortage we're unaware of? he types, like a man possessed. I really hate it when -- stop right there. It sounds like what he's possessed by is Andy Rooney.

9:20 p.m.

Ah, that reliable old standby, the Groundhog Day parody. The columnist, seeing his own shadow, he types, determined that there will be six more weeks of frigid columns in which he ponders the significance of his charming domestic foibles. Alas, that pretty much exhausts that idea.

9:58 p.m.

His dander long since fallen, he wonders, Why not parody the sordid doings in the White House? Because it's already a parody, a self-fulfilling satire, that's why. Any event that has Ted Koppel sounding like the Playboy Advisor is beyond the reach of his feeble irony.

10:30 p.m.

Thank God for the strange wrinkles in human ingenuity. It's Rule No. 3: When you see a story headlined, "Obstetrician develops apron that plays music to fetuses," grab that baby and break for daylight.

So here goes: A Dr. David Min of Munster, Ind., has developed the Rock-a-Bye system to pump soothing music to the unborn. The goal: Give them a more sedate prenatal experience, their own music womb (Rule No. 4: Puns enliven any column!).

"We're breaking new ground," Min says. As the columnist searches vainly for a breaking-ground/breaking-water pun, another column perishes in utero.

11:26 p.m.

Rule No. 5: Write or get off the pot! OK, he'll do the I-can't-write-a-column column, but he'll stuff it with his burnt-out ideas, then dress it up in the third person -- very quasi-literary! -- and make it a parable of the creative process! He's not breaking new ground, but it's something. His fingers twitch over the keyboard. He feels that familiar tingly surge at the base of his spine.