Believe it or not!
Remember Ripley's Believe It or Not?
Since I was a kid, I have been fascinated by the stories that Ripley had reported from around the world, mostly about strange people and weird happenings. In his books and on the website, you can find a 200-year-old living Chinese salamander, an armless tattoo artist who uses his feet, and some very high-priced women's fashions made from roadkill.I thought I would offer my own version of the strange and unbelievable, with all due respect to the original master.Believe it or not!In this grand country of ours where the national deficit is astronomical, pension funds are underfunded, the future of Social Security is at risk and 45 million Americans are living in poverty, Powerball gave away over a billion dollars just because some lucky numbers were matched. Are you kidding me?Believe it or not!The other day I walked into a store to buy a box of Cheerios. I looked through three long shelves of yogurt Cheerios, honey nut Cheerios, chocolate Cheerios, multigrain Cheerios, peanut butter Cheerios, banana nut Cheerios, apple cinnamon Cheerios and fruity Cheerios. I then asked a young store worker where I could find the regular, plain old Cheerios.She said, "I never heard of just Cheerios."I finally found a box of original Cheerios, after reading the labels of 13 different varieties. Then I went to the bread aisle and spent another five minutes looking for plain white bread!Believe it or not!I took my son to the new Kalahari indoor water park recently for his friend's birthday party. Lounging near the kiddie pool, I saw a little boy walk into the water wearing top and bottom Star Wars flannel pajamas. Each time he tried to get up out of the water, he fell down from the wet weight of his pjs. I tried to make sense of what I was seeing. It was getting late. Perhaps his parents used a hair dryer on his pajamas when they got him home and then put him right to bed!Believe it or not!While sports reporting for this newspaper, every high school basketball game I've attended in the past two years has been disturbed by a fan who heckled an official or an opposing player."Go home and bake a cake," yelled a male fan toward a female official.At every venue, a verbal warning is issued. Any fan acting unsportsmanlike toward a player or official will be evicted from the gym. Once I saw a forewarned fan ejected because he threw a one-finger gesture at an athletic director.At another game, I heard an elderly man shout down at an official, "Go to the eye doctor; you're as blind as a bat!"Fans sitting near this man burst into laughter and applauded. His comment was followed by a remark from a little girl sitting next to him."That's my grandpa," she screamed proudly!Believe it or not!I fish in a lake that was man-made by a private community. The fish are bought and stocked by the community. The residents maintain the quality of the water. Yet the state of Pennsylvania collects revenue from required fishing licenses and boating registrations from this private community and uses it for public need. The state claims the community doesn't own the water in the lake that is fed by deep springs under the ground.So a lake can be privately owned, just not the water in it!Believe it or not!Speaking of making money without owning an element of nature, a company will sell you a star and name it after you. You get an official certificate that shows you which star is yours, marked by a dot on a piece of paper. Supposedly, no one else owns your dot. I mean "star."What a great business. It's pure profit except for some paper and a bit of unproven knowledge in astronomy!I am thinking of starting a business selling clouds and snowflakes. When you order, you'll receive a drawing of your own snowflake or cloud with your name on it. Believe it or not, you get all this for just $49.95!Rich Strack can be reached at