There’s that story told about a little boy, apparently healthy, born to healthy parents, who wouldn’t talk. No matter what anyone did, no matter how many experts they consulted, the child just wasn’t talking.  One day, when he was four years old, sitting at dinner, he looked up from the meatloaf he was eating and stunned everyone when he said, “This tastes bad.”

His parents were amazed. Obviously this kid could talk…why hadn’t he before now, they asked.

He simply said, “Everything’s been fine up to now.”

I could insert some long, rambling soliloquy here about time spent away. I could even make up some cockamamie story about how I was abducted by aliens and missed about a year.

I would be lying. So I won’t even try. Let’s just say that everything has been fine up ’til now, but now I have something to talk about.

And THAT, of course, is Tiger Woods, and all the hoopla about his apparent inability to keep his putter in his pants, even though he must have the hand/eye coordination of those aliens who abducted me.

Just some observations:

– Would everyone quit the heck talking about how amazed they are that Tiger would cheat on his gorgeous wife? Enough, already. Yes, his wife is gorgeous. No, that doesn’t seem to stop anyone from cheating. When I was a Weight Watchers leader, one of the things I would caution my members about was the belief that looking great would attract and retain a better quality of lover.

In fact, I’m thinking that the opposite may be true: that a woman is actually better off, monogamous-wise, if she’s average-looking. My reasoning is this: the gorgeous woman gets everyone after her, just because. The pool of men chasing an Elin Nordegren includes some great guys, to be sure. But it also includes a huge supply of mouth-breathers who are going to chase a gorgeous blonde with no thought to whether they have anything in common with her or whether she knows all the words to the Boomtown Rats discography.

A woman like me? With average looks? When I was single, my pool of available men didn’t have one mouth-breather. If a guy was interested in me, he was not going to be easily hypnotized by simple, stunning good looks.  Any guy who talked to me was much more likely to be a real keeper, by default, because my looks had pre-weeded out the non-discriminators who focused only on looks.

– Would everyone else quit talking about how every. single. man (or married man, for that matter) would cheat on his partner if beautiful women were throwing themselves at him?

That’s just insulting to men and I don’t believe it’s true. Would a lot of men conveniently lose their wedding rings if a gorgeous woman came on to them? Sure; I’ll bite. But not every man will.

– If I had to guess why Tiger’s life started melting the week of Thanksgiving, I’d say that it’s a direct result of  Todd Marinovich Syndrome. Seriously: Tiger was putting at age three on Merv Griffin…there had to be distinct pressure on him, some of it self-inflicted, from a young age. Even with his prodigious athletic ability, you don’t win all those majors without incredible hard work and self-sacrifice. I’m thinking that after all that deprivation, something had to give.

I just hope that the next stunt from Mr. Woods doesn’t involve a porn star/ex-hooker flipping off  Touchdown Jesus. 

It would appear that the only endorsement Tiger’s gonna be able to get in the near future will be for Tang.

Poontang, that is.

(Please. I HAD TO. IT WAS SITTING RIGHT THERE, WAITING TO BE SAID.)