The Buck Stops Over There with Them ...

Thanks to Roger Baker for this.

Hi there, average voter. While you are trying to figure out how to make your home payments, I am out here skiing and trying to figure out how to apologize for missing the last couple of my newsletters. The bottom line is that I'm a Texas Senator and a banker, but you are not.

I make the rules around here which is hard work so I have to play hard too. If you don't like that then you can vote for somebody else next time.

Sorry about TxDOT giving me a bum steer on the toll road funding thing. The buck stops over there with them. Who else could have ever known how bad things had gotten???

If you ever get a little ahead of the game, you should come join me out here on the slopes. I know all the best places to go.

Yours truly,
The Man

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Sen. Kirk Watson to me
Watson Wire: Kirk Watson, Texas Senate

I had a middle school speech teacher who taught us to never start with an apology. She told us not to begin by saying you're sorry for not being a good speaker, and not to whine about not having been prepared. She said to avoid asking forgiveness for whatever it is that you're feeling insecure about.

The lesson was to just overcome the insecurity. Rise above it. It was a good enough lesson that I obviously still remember it.

But sometimes things are so egregious, so bad, so just plain wrong that you have to start with an apology. So, here goes.

I apologize that I left you for two Fridays without a Watson Wire. It must have been particularly hard during the holidays.

I'm not really sorry, though. The Watson family had a great break. We've developed a tradition in which we sneak away for some pure family time and ski together during the winter break. So we did it again this year. We went to New Mexico and played a bunch, ate a bunch, saw movies that there never seems to be time to see when we're at home, played board games (which never happens when we're at home), and generally had a wonderful time.

The good news is that I learned something on this trip.

I learned that, when you're writing an email on your Blackberry and you've chosen to do it on a ski lift, you need to carefully monitor where you are. Otherwise, you can look up and find, to your complete surprise, that you're at the end of the line. Those riding with you will easily slip off the chair, but you will be, in the blink of an eye, trying to save a draft of what you've written, shoving the Blackberry into your pocket, pulling your gloves on to your freezing hands, and grabbing your ski poles out from under you.

And it's just possible that, having done all of this, you'll still find yourself dropping (some might say jumping) off the chair onto the hard-packed snow a couple of feet below. And I learned the drop is far enough that even a very athletic and stunningly coordinated man can fall into a sad heap.

Finally, I learned that when this kind of thing happens, people stare and some even laugh at you...