Five times on television, but only once was it all about me

There are cool things that happen in our lives, and some of them are completely unexpected.

Growing up in the 1950s and '60s, as part of the first generation raised with television, it often seemed that people we saw on TV were somehow more special, even more real, than just average folks.

I was on television twice before I graduated from high school, both times on "It's Academic," the long-running high school version of the old "College Bowl" quiz show. In the years before video recorders and DVDs, I don't think there is any record of the two shows I did in the spring of 1967.



It was more than 17 years before my next appearance. It was three days before Christmas 1984. I was working for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat covering  University of Missouri basketball, and the Tigers were playing at Ohio State.

The game was being telecast back to Missouri, and the Mizzou broadcasters asked me to come on at halftime to discuss the first half of the game. I don't remember much about the appearance, and I never saw it.

My funniest time on television came in 1998, when a guy who had a local cable access show in San Dimas, California, invited me on for the full hour. I was a metro columnist at the time and he wanted to talk about race relations.

I don't remember much about it, other than he interviewed me and then we took calls for the rest of the hour.

At least we intended to.

I'm not sure if I was that boring or if maybe there just weren't any people watching the show, but the phone never rang once in the entire hour.

I made one more television appearance in 2000 and this time it was all about me. The PBS station in Riverside had a 30-minute magazine show called "Evening Edition," and on one of their shows, the first six-minute story was about that little old columnist, me.

It wasn't the coolest thing that ever happened in my life, but it was definitely in the top three.

And here it is, preserved for all time.