Punched Out

Well it’s been about 15 years since I made a mistake like the one I did in my story on Russ Ebeid’s great and prophetic speech at the BEC Conference. Thankfully, a number of our alert readers let me know about it. Not since I said Waiting for Godot was written by Eugene Ionesco (it wasn’t) have I been so embarrassed by a wrong word or two.

Let me start by saying that I don’t know much about prize-fighting. Never even saw a bout, and I wouldn’t know a heavyweight from waterweight, or is that welter weight? No weight--I mean wait--water weight I’m familiar with.

Anyway, the general rule in journalism is to write what you know and, if you don’t know it, look it up. So while I searched my brain for a phrase that would convey the depth of power that Mr. Ebeid’s words had delivered to the audience (because his speech had some knock-you-down stunning information in it) I came up with gut-punched, but somehow confused it with sucker-punched. And I didn’t look it up to check.

I feel especially bad because I admire Russ Ebeid as much as a person could, so to somehow suggest that he was involved in sucker-punching anything or anybody is horrifiying. The article has been corrected and the offending word striken.

The readers who contacted me were very kind, saying that they knew I meant gut-punch but had written the wrong thing. Even Earnest Thompson of Guardian itself was pleasant. “That’s okay,” he said, “maybe you had just been listening to too much Puscifer lately,”

I appreciate that, and I sure hope the big guy himself will forgive me. See, I already messed up this week. I knew he had just had a birthday and had promised him a cake. So I had brought some birthday candles with me and was going to run over when they served dessert at the Glass Week dinner and pop them in his cake. But, alas, they gave us a poached pear. I spent the better part of dessert wondering if one could put candles in the whipped cream and not ignite a fire. I erred on the side of caution. No candles.

So Mr. Ebeid, if perhaps you see you way clear to read this, I owe you more than a birthday cake now. You name it. Any punishment and I’ll take it. You want me to hit a punching bag (or myself) with Everready gloves for an hour? You got it. Want me to learn all the names of every prize-fighting champion in the world? I’m on it. I will even—gulp—watch all four Rocky movies (including even the third one) in a row. But I will never, ever again confuse a sucker-punch with a gut-punch again. My apologies.