My advice to youth

"Youth is wasted on the young," said some old man a long time ago, and no one young listened to him either.

But consider what's going on just south of here, down in Virginia.

• the governor either did or did not pose as either a guy in blackface or a guy in Klan robes in his med school days
• but as he denied being in the now-famous picture, he freely chirped up with the info that he entered a Michael Jackson dance contest while wearing Jacksonian regalia and with his face cosmetically darkened
• the lieutenant governor, his putative replacement, is accused of sexual assault
• the attorney general, next in line for the governor's mansion, also volunteered that he donned the facepaint and clothing in order to pay tribute to Kurtis Blow back in his college days
• that would leave a man named Kirk Cox to run the state, because...and get this....last year's race for the state House of Delegate seat from the 94th District was declared a tie, so...
• an elections official pulled the name of the incumbent, David Yancey, out of a ceramic bowl designed by a ceramicist at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts as the tiebreaker.

I know what you're thinking; this sounds like the news as read on "Hee Haw," but it all seems to be happening right now.


So, here is the advice I have for you, dear gentle young readers:

Don't be involved in costumery that degrades and humiliates other people.
Be wise and careful about your romances.
And don't think that the dumb stuff you do right now won't come back to bite you on the asterisk* years from now.