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FOREWORD

On a chilly winter evening six years ago, my great friend Rob Hiaasen and I sat in an Irish bar in the northern Baltimore suburbs, swilling pints of Guinness.

The band was playing a god-awful Pogues cover, one that, were it ever played in the presence of Shane MacGowan, would cause the band’s legendary front man to weep and stab himself with a sharp object.

Rob quickly tired of the caterwauling on stage. So we moved to a quieter spot in the back of the room, where he was eager to share news about his latest exercise regimen.

Months earlier, he explained, he’d bought boxing gloves, an 80-pound Everlast heavy bag and a speed bag. Now, every night after work, he was punching the bags for 12 three-minute “rounds” and resting for a minute between each one—just like in a real boxing match.

“I’m in pretty decent shape,” he said. “In fact, I’m thinking of getting in the ring against someone. What do you think?”

I stared at him.

My God, was this the Guinness talking already!?

The man was 54 years old! I pictured him taking a shot to the jaw and—mouthpiece or no mouthpiece—watching two or three loosened teeth float through the air like gleaming Chiclets. I envisioned him taking an uppercut to the gut that would leave him crumpled and wheezing on the canvas.

“Are you out of your freaking mind?” I said finally.

“But I’m ready,” he said.

“No,” I said, “you’re not.” Not at that age, buddy.

He looked down at his beer. For an instant, his shoulders seemed to sag. Then he threw his head back and laughed uproariously.

The full absurdity of it all had finally dawned on him: a gentle suburban husband and dad, a Norwegian pacifist with an AARP card—a man whose last dustup with another human being had occurred when he was 12 and another kid punched him in a middle-school gym for allegedly breaking his love beads—climbing into the ring against some skilled brute half his age, with a lump of scar-tissue for a face.

And all for exercise, no less!

Yet even as Rob’s pipe dream faded in the din of the noisy room and the conversation turned to other topics, I knew one thing was certain: he’d get a column, one way or another, out of this boxing fantasy.

And just days later, he did.

In fact, it’s re-printed right here (“Love punch”), in this wonderful collection of columns he wrote for the Annapolis Capital Gazette from 2010 until last year, when an unspeakable shooting at the newspaper claimed his life and the lives of four of his colleagues.

Also included is a short first-person piece Rob wrote for The Baltimore Sun, where he worked as a gifted features writer for 15 years. It’s about a damp, nervous evening he spent as a chaperone for a middle school dance. You can almost feel the hormones bouncing off the cafeteria walls in his re-telling.

Like the man himself, the columns in this book are often big-hearted, whimsical and self-deprecating. They’re keenly-observed slices of everyday life—to my mind the very best gift a general columnist can give his or her readers.

Many, like the pieces that chronicle Rob’s love for dogs, his iffy luck with cars and his wariness of modern technology, will make you laugh out loud. Some, like the touching “What I Did On Spring Vacation,” about visiting the grave of a long-dead childhood friend and pulling weeds from the simple marker, might even make you misty-eyed.

More than anything, what these columns represent is a fervid appreciation for life—and of the common humanity in all of us.

Whether kindly mentoring young reporters as an editor at the Capital Gazette, wandering the bustling streets of Annapolis and his beloved Eastport neighborhood looking for column ideas, or teaching the next generation of journalists as an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland, Rob constantly strove to connect with others and learn what makes them tick.

He does that again throughout this delightful collection, where his love of story-telling shines through on every page.

Kevin Cowherd

Cockeysville, Md.

February, 2019