Everybody's
Hit-or-Miss
by Marjorie
Daystar
When things are going badly, take heart:
· Babe Ruth struck out 1330 times, an average of 86
per 162 games.
· Lincoln lost his share of elections, and so did
Jack Kennedy.
· Henry James wrote a number of embarrassingly bad
novels before finding his true calling in theater.
· Joe Montana dropped three of the six passes thrown
to him in the 1981 Super Bowl versus Miami.
· Al Gore was arrested for drunk driving when he was
about thirty years old or so.
· The famous poetry editor Amber LeFortune considers
Elizabeth Barrett Browning "a great master".
· Roberto Baggio's first shot-on-goal broke the window
of a Ford Explorer in the parking lot at Calcio Abruzzio Sports,
and he had to work in a cappuccino bar all summer to pay it off.
· King Henry VIII was beheaded by his first wife,
but later went on to found the Exchequer and the Legion d'Honneur,
and Exeter University, and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.
· And who can forget the original draft of Nabokov's
most famous novel, the beginning of which reads:
Jennifer! Light of
my life, fire of my loins. My sin/soul. Jenn-i-fer. The clenched
teeth opening up a little until the tongue touches the roof of the
mouth (the "n" sound) right before the teeth press the bottom lip
and pucker for the terminal R. Jenn. I. Fer.
I get a stiff one just thinking
about her.
