At least I’m not Paul Jones…

What next, diapers for your goldfish?

(Ed Sullivan and The Beatles)

We all remember our deepest fear from childhood, don’t we? It wasn’t kidnapping, or quicksand, or even lima beans.

It was our Permanent Record.

“Bobby, if you eat that praying mantis, it’s going on your Permanent Record,” Miss Judd must have told me a hundred times back in the first grade.

We never saw our Permanent Record. We didn’t have to. We knew it was a snarling gargoyle that would go for our throats. We might be six years old today, but sometime, maybe when we’re 24 years old and near death, the Permanent Record would be waiting to finish us off.

Fortunately, most people lose this fear when they grow up. But do you know who doesn’t get to lose it? Ever?

Journalists.

That’s because for us, a Permanent Record actually exists, and it will follow us to the grave and beyond. Every name we misspell, every dubious fact we commit to paper, every story angle that someday proves to have been really stupid, sits in some database. Ticking time bombs.

Today’s byline is tomorrow’s express train ride to Humiliation Town. I have seen this happen to me. And about the only solace I have, the only thing I can hang onto for a little dignity, is one fact: At least I’m not Paul Jones.

We’ll get back to him in just a minute.

We never know what’s going to come back to bite us. It might be a big factual error, or maybe just society’s changing values, leveraged against our own advancing years.

For instance. Back in 1967, as a very young reporter for the Indianapolis News, I wrote a story about a local man who was still piloting his own airplane at what I then called, in print, “the unbelievably ripe old age of 74.”

I recently found this story, complete with my byline, on an Indianapolis nostalgia Facebook page where someone had posted it. Do you see what I mean about clueless stuff nipping at our heels half a century later?

As far as I can tell from my story, the pilot’s advanced age seems to have been the only justification for writing it.

Today, 74 doesn’t seem old to me at all.  If I wanted to fly a plane, I would just do it. What was I thinking?

Still, at least I’m not Paul Jones.

Consider this one. In 1972, some cities were just starting to recognize the toll that dog poop was taking on their urban landscape. A few of them were passing ordinances requiring dog people to pick up after their pets. Instead of applauding them, I chose to snicker and resort to cheap quips in a column I wrote.

“What next, diapers for your goldfish?” I asked. 

I ended that column by reminding my readers I had gotten “the scoop” on this story.

What a dick I was!

That story sat like a cicada in my brain, watching and waiting. As I matured and became deeply involved in animal welfare and responsible guardianship of pets, I frequently remembered what I had written, and felt pangs of remorse. I’m just getting this out in the open now, before someone else does.

Still, at least I’m not Paul Jones.

When I turned 21, I was suddenly old enough to vote, to buy liquor and to write whatever lame thing drifted into my pea brain. Just recently, I saw a discussion thread on the Indianapolis nostalgia site, about a 1967 rock concert that was headlined by the group Herman’s Hermits.

Participants in this particular discussion recalled attending the concert, which in turn reminded me that I had actually reviewed that event for my paper.

I went back and reread my review. Big mistake.

I declared the Hermits, who performed hits such as “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter,” to be “refreshing” and “nothing but lovable.” Those were my words.

I showed far less affection for their warm-up act, a group called The Who. I used words like “nightmare” to describe their performance, wondering fearfully if they represented the future of rock. I did not mention a single one of their songs or a single member of the group by name. This is called pathetically bad reporting.

Still, at least I’m not Paul Jones.

Here it comes. On February 9, 1964, 60 years ago this very week, a fairly well-known group called The Beatles made their American television debut on the Ed Sullivan Show.

The event did not go unnoticed. It attracted 73 million viewers, which was a record at the time.

A Philadelphia columnist named Paul Jones did not hold back, under the headline, “Sullivan Wasted Time With Beatles.”

The band certainly had not become famous through musical talent, Paul Jones informed us, adding, “There is nothing attractive about the looks or the sounds of The Beatles.”

(A tank, left, Elvis, right)

But Paul Jones still wasn’t finished. Without their haircuts, he said, The Beatles would be just like other rock groups, “which are still trying to keep alive the fad which died when Elvis Presley entered the armed forces.”

Wait. Hold the phone. Rock ‘n’ roll was just a fad? And it died in 1958? Gosh, I wish someone had told me this sooner, like before I spent all that money on The Rolling Stones, The Doobies, Bruce Springsteen and, yes, The Who.

So now, that Beatles column lingers, available with a simple online search, alive forever in Paul Jones’ Permanent Record.

Well, it’s getting late now. It’s dark out. I hear crickets. Fireflies are flickering outside my bedroom window. I guess it’s time to tuck myself in, bow my head and recite the traditional Journalist’s Prayer:

Thank you, God, for not making me Paul Jones. Amen…