Andy Rooney
It was a Sunday afternoon, a time we had planned to visit a local thrift store to browse for used paperbacks. This is a fun activity for us, so we try to schedule such trips periodically. In my usual process, I scanned the shelves for known authors or titles of interest.
My usual favorites were there, but I noticed a hard-cover book, somewhat ragged, standing alone on an upper shelf. Curiosity filled me, so I picked it up: the book was Word for Word, by Andy Rooney. Many of the chapters were undoubtedly from his experiences on the TV show, “60 Minutes.” This brought back many memories from the 60s and 70s to my dear wife and me, enjoying the show on Sunday evenings, watching Mike Wallace bring corporate executives to their knees, seeing Lesley Stahl expose corruption and cheating in industries — and, at the end of each show, there was Andy Rooney, bringing us all back to some of the fundamentals of our short time on this Earth.
That short segment by Mr. Rooney was always treasured by us because he sensitized us to the frailty of our existence and our need to be accepting and supportive of one another, and also to not take life’s problems so seriously. And here, in my hands, was a book containing many of those episodes, episodes I could now relive again. Did I buy the book? Does a cow moo? Yes, I tucked that volume under my arm, and it left the thrift store safely with me.
No, I don’t mean to imply that everything Andy Rooney said or wrote in his life was humorous. After all, he was a seasoned and skilled writer, had flown on dangerous bombing raids over Germany in WWII as a reporter, and sometimes stated and wrote words that offended people — and he acknowledged those flaws and never attempted to deny the truth or his mistakes. I admire his strength in being open to doing that. He wasn’t perfect and always expressed how he felt and was willing to later admit being wrong. We need more people such as him.
But what I wrote in the above paragraph is but a small portion of a meaningful life, and this book brings back much of the best of his words to the world. We have a great deal to learn from each other, even in writings of the mundane and the trivial. No, you can’t borrow the book; it’s mine.