Published: March 05, 2008 12:53 am            

Keep those cards and letters coming

I love receiving e-mails from readers of this column.

The positive correspondence is flattering, and always appreciated, but nothing tickles my funny bone more than someone who has taken offense to something I have written. I love it.

It’s so strange. In every other aspect of my life I would cringe to think I had offended someone. In my non-column life, I go to great pains to make better a situation in which someone disagrees with me. In the newspaper, for some strange reason, it’s different. Most of the time, the madder the author is, the better — and more entertaining — the e-mail.

I once wrote a column about my daughter and the scam she ran on me when trying to sell her Girl Scout cookies. I never criticized the cookies. No way. I love the cookies. It was the way my daughter decided to sell the cookies by getting all of the money from me, up front.

The e-mails began pouring in. I was awed by the Girl Scouts ability to mobilize their troops (maybe we need to send a battalion of cookie-wielding Girl Scouts over to Iraq). They telephoned my daughter’s den mother, they called the house. It was a blast. In the end, I was stuck with a few dozen cases of cookies and an inbox full of hilarious e-mails.

PETA members, vegetarians, and fans of Barbra Streisand are the most vocal and rabid of my regular e-mailers. But now I have added a new group who are in the process of pushing Streisand fans out of third place — people who love to eat deer sausage.

A few weeks ago I wrote a column about my dislike of deer sausage, and how my friends are always trying to dump their excess deer sausage onto me. My point was: If it’s so good, why not eat it yourself. No one ever brings steak or pork chops to my house, etc … yada, yada, yada. You know the drill. I jokingly proposed a cow, chicken, and pig season so that my hunter friends might be able to feed me more tasteful hunting leftovers.

A lady named Debra began her e-mail with the sentence, “This is the most disgusting article I have ever read.” I surmise from Debra’s correspondence that she is not up to snuff on the plight of the citizens of Rwanda or — as my mother used to say — “the starving Armenians.”

Donna in Savannah, Ga. opined, “You apparently don’t know how to prepare it in your high and mighty upscale restaurant.” Actually, we occasionally serve venison in one of my restaurants. Unfortunately, as I have stated before, I am not a fan of deer meat, so I always order the fish.

Several people offered to take the excess deer sausage in my freezer off of my hands. Thank you, but I don’t think my deer hunting friends will be bringing their hunting bounty to my house, anymore. I have a strong feeling that my supply has forever run dry.

My favorite e-mail came from a fellow named Calvin in Madison, who wrote, “Because, in your opinion, deer sausage is not good, does not mean to say that it is not good to others … You might not like the taste of venison, but do not write negative articles about a food that thousands of people around the world do in fact enjoy consuming.” I wrote Calvin and told him that his sentence baffled me. I think he is under the erroneous assumption that I have some type of mysterious power over newspaper readers, and can magically make thousands of people around the world who “love” eating a certain food immediately discard their love of said food just because I don’t like it. That’s just not the case. Thousands?

There were a few who thought I was serious when I proposed a cow-hunting season. I don’t know how to respond to those concerns.

In the end, I did learn that there are several charitable organizations who feed excess deer sausage (and there’s probably a lot of it) to those in need. If you have freezers full of unwanted deer meat, I suggest that you donate it to charity.

Maybe I’ll talk to my publisher and publish some of the e-mail correspondence I have received over the past nine years. It will probably be more interesting than the actual columns themselves. In the meantime, keep those cards and letters coming.

        

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