I regret I won’t have time this week to get into the details about how Barack Obama managed to wiretap Donald Trump’s shoelaces or what life was like in Mongolia during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). Please be patient. I have both subjects at the top of my To-Do list in the coming weeks. 

Instead, I must apply for my annual recertification as a modest and much-beloved columnist. This is not unlike propane tank recertification, only a lot more dangerous. Propane tanks don’t tend to blow up when called a bed-wetting liberal by an angry white guy or the southernmost part of a northbound equine by a — well — bed-wetting liberal. (Those weren’t her exact words, but I am sure you get the gist of what she was saying.) Editors would likely find a propane tank easier to manage and wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time explaining to angry readers why they keep running a propane tank on their pages each week.
Now, if you will excuse me, I must get to my paperwork. It has to be turned in today. Otherwise, I will have to pay a late fee and then be required to watch a rerun of the 2016 scrum between the student-athletes from UGA and You-Know-Where Institute of Technology. Actually, I am only required to watch the last 36 seconds of that debacle but that is punishment enough. 

Question one: How would you describe your political philosophy?
Besides being called a bed-wetting liberal by an angry white guy or one end of an equine headed in the other direction by a bed-wetting liberal? Gee, I don’t know. Maybe a horse’s patoot who wets his bed? 

Give an example of where your column made a difference:
That’s easy. The Jekyll Island Authority announced it was going to shoot the whitetail deer on the island because they were a nuisance (the deer, not members of the Jekyll Island Authority.) Since I believe most tourists come to Jekyll Island to see the deer and not members of the Jekyll Island Authority, I suggested that the whitetail deer shoot members of the Jekyll Island Authority. That seems to have solved the problem.

What do you consider your biggest disappointment? 
I wish I could have had a greater impact on the growing epidemic of humor-impairment in this nation. I failed miserably to get certain Baptists to see the irony of taking a gun to church, which they called a “sanctity of life” issue, while blithely ignoring the commandment from God about “Thou shalt not kill.” I also whiffed with the atheists who still refuse to believe that it was God who soaked their skivvies when Dr. Gil Watson, the World’s Greatest Preacher, prayed for rain on the grounds of the state Capitol during the drought of 2007. They sent me a bunch of eye-glazing charts saying it wasn’t God. It had something to do with isobars or fig bars or maybe it was life in Mongolia during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). I’m not sure. I just know the charts looked mildewed. But now that I think about it, humorless Baptists and humorless atheists — that’s pretty funny!

What is the most difficult part of being a modest and much-beloved columnist?
Other than not knowing where to put commas, it is being constantly mistaken for Brad Pitt. Thankfully, nobody thinks I look like Meryl Streep.

What is the most rewarding part of being a modest an much-beloved columnist?
It is telling people that I really am Brad Pitt. That, and my volunteer work with our intrepid public servants under the Gold Dome who look to me for guidance as they seek new and innovative ways to make our lives more complicated than they already are. 

If you are recertified as a modest and much-beloved columnist, what will be your major initiative?
If I am fortunate enough to be recertified, my first act will be to get a law enacted that all legislators must spend 40 days in a classroom while public schoolteachers take their place under the Gold Dome and pass a voucher bill giving teachers a tax credit for sending the legislators to a certain location where talcum powder won’t help their permanent heat rash, if you get my drift. 

I sure will be glad to get this recertification requirement behind me. It is a grueling process. Being a modest and much-beloved columnist isn’t as easy as I make it look. I just hope I don’t wet the bed.

You can reach Dick Yarbrough at yarb2400@bellsouth.net; at P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139; online at dickyarbrough.com or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/dickyarb.