(Originally ran in Sunday, November 15 editions of The Times and The News-Star)

The Jeopardy! game show (just this second had to look up how to spell the word “jeopardy” so…you can see where this is going) was the perfect example, for me, that ignorance is bliss.

Any time I wanted to feel less smart (or more stupid) than I already am, humility was just one remote control button away. Time to “play” Jeopardy!

“Play” Jeopardy!? As if I had any chance of knowing the answer to this clue: “Rangoon, AKA Yangon, is this country’s biggest city.”

Rangoon? AKA What?! You’re telling me you didn’t make up that word/“city” just now while you’re standing there?

It’s more like “It’s time to ‘work’ Jeopardy!” Not play.

And yet, I was always content to watch it because host Alex Trebek would smoothly and kindly — even effortlessly, it seemed — lead this cavalcade of Trivia Geniuses through a maze of big words, big money, and Stuff I’ve Never Heard Of.

Our general feeling while watching Jeopardy!: “Look at all these smart people! And this nice, sharp-dressed man helping them along. Not picking on them when they answer something wrong or draw a blank after hitting their little buzzer thingies. How do they know Prince lyrics AND the state capital of Washington AND who Paulo Coelho is?”

Game show? GAME show? More like the SAT on steroids.

The Price is Right and guessing which costs more, a box of Cream of Wheat or 24 ounces of thin spaghetti while a leggy blonde in faux fur and heels points to the products that are right there anyway, that’s a game show.

Hollywood Squares and Paul Lynde cracking wise and “X gets the square,” that’s a game show. 

Not Jeopardy! Jeopardy! is mental play-for-keeps combat for cash money, my vortex (whichever brain vortex it is that does the thinking) against your vortex, and if you don’t have your thinking cap on, it’s best to come sit with me in the corner and be quiet as you can, maybe read the Encyclopedia Britannica more like your parents begged you to.

Tough “game” show. I mean, an exclamation point is part of the name. Jeopardy!

These people aren’t jacking around.

If humiliation is your thing, you can actually go online and take a Jeopardy! test. Google “jeopardy questions.” I did. Add that to the long list of regrets in my life…Hello, shoe-sized IQ.

Answer: “This type of home with a gable roof is typical of the Swiss Alps.”

What is Gable Roof-type house?

NEG! “What is a chalet?” is the correct answer.

Chalet? Wait. Isn’t that a type of automo….?

Answer: “Elizabeth and Bloody Mary were both members of this royal house.”

What is a chalet? Yes!

NEGATORY! “What is the House of Tudor” is correct.

But you just said that about the chalet and that it’s a house and…

Answer: “Located in Rhode Island, it’s alphabetically the first among Ivy League schools.”

What is AAAbilene Christian?

YOU’RE FIRED FROM JEOPARDY!!

Wow. TWO exclamation points.

Sportscaster Dan Patrick interviewed Trebek in 2014 on The Dan Patrick Show when Patrick was preparing to host Sports Jeopardy!, which ran for parts of three seasons. Trebek lasted 36 seasons on Jeopardy!, from its revival in 1984 until his disheartening death from cancer this week. Hurt me.

Trebek told Patrick that his job as host of Jeopardy! was to “run the show and help the contestants,” not to make fun of a competitor who answered “Magic Johnson” to a question about a player in the National Hockey League.

“Have fun,” Trebek told Patrick when asked for his advice, “and don’t take yourself too seriously.

Answer: “Who is the greatest ‘game show’ host ever, who was classy and humble and will be greatly missed, and who didn’t make fun of you if you didn’t know the state capital of Washington or where Rangoon, AKA Yangon was?”

“Who is Alex Trebek, AKA The Best Ever?”

Correct.

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Ran originally in Sunday Nov. 8, 2020 editions of Louisiana Gannett newspapers

The picture is really close from his chest up and he’s at the beach, probably North Myrtle Beach, the big sky and water in the background. Cricket loved the beach. He let me ride the 43 miles with him from our hometown to the beach one summer Sunday night, back when he was 18 and a star on the football team and I was 8 and trying to figure out long division.

Olive T-shirt, shades in silver rims, camouflage cap with a brown patch advertising some store in Tabor City, North Carolina, just down the road and across the state line where we both grew up in Lake View, South Carolina. (Tabor City? Just hop on the Swamp Fox Highway and … can’t miss it.)

In the photo, he’s got half a cigar in his mouth and he’s biting it in his jaw so it’s crooked and sideways, the way you’d imagine a general’s cigar would be as he’s observing troops from the high ground. His white whiskers stand out on his tanned skin. He’s holding a puppy, chocolate and white and sleepy, tight against his chest. The drowsy puppy is distracted by something off to its right and isn’t looking at the camera. Cricket is though. He looks like he’s just where he wants to be in that moment.

At the beach, with a dog, sporting camouflage, the salt in the air, the sun in the sky and a half-lit heater in his jaw, I’m sure he was. At least the Cricket I knew as a boy would have been.

Maybe 45 years have passed since I’ve seen James Edward “Cricket” Cox. But this picture that ran with his obituary told me he hadn’t changed, the same ’til the end.

Cricket was, as they say, “a character.” Once my dad saw him walking on the sidewalk; he had only one shoe on.

“Lost a shoe?” my dad asked.

“No sir Bro. Richard!” Cricket said, all smiles. “Found one!”

He was that kind of guy.

On that Sunday night trip to Calabash at the beach, with its long line of seafood restaurants, we suddenly saw the Atlantic and one of Cricket’s twin cousins said, “Look at all that water.”

And Cricket said, “And just think: that’s only the top of it.”

A good-sized farmboy in a small town, Cricket took an interest in church once he and my father became friends when Cricket was in high school and daddy was a teacher/preacher. Big day for everybody when daddy baptized him.

But then came Life After High School and a shiftlessness and drug dealing and daddy visiting Cricket, most unfortunately, in the pen.

But he turned around again. Got his feet, either bare or wearing only one shoe, back on the good path. Guarantee you all those kin mentioned in his obit, many with old-school names like Foster and Esther, Pig and Olene, Ace and Eldora, Horace and Tommy Ray, were richer from living within Cricket’s gravitational pull.

I know I am. We need more like him.

His obit began with a picture of a man who, at 71, was content with his lot, a guy who didn’t mind blooming where he’d been planted. And it ended with a family note, a wise and cheerful word from his daughters, a sentiment we need more of these days, sort of a “goodbye wave” from Cricket.

“In lieu of flowers or memorials, Cricket’s daughters request that you make a special effort to reach out to your loved ones and let them know just how much they mean to you. Tell them you love them. Ask for forgiveness and offer it as well. Show the same love to others that Jesus Christ has for you. James 4:14 states ‘Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.’ Live with no regrets and love like there is no tomorrow.”

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