I’ve mentioned in the past about a childhood hero I had in the 60′s who had a tv show called “Bannon’s Buddies.”

I remember so well when my cub scout den got to go to a live taping of the show. The anticipation of seeing “Bannon” himself, live, was intoxicating. It was so palpable that even now, decades later, it’s possible to still savor that joy.

Time does march forward and heroes tend to fall like night to the dawning day as we grow older. The belief in heroes seems so arcane these days. My ‘buddy’ Bannon’s show was canceled; he turned out to be rather snobbish and arrogant, not even liking children all that much. My bubble was burst, I got over it, life went on.

In recent years, I’ve noticed that I’ve found some new heroes. Most of them are out of the ordinary and not even on most people’s radar screens. I can mention their names in mixed company and most don’t know who they are. I suppose that makes them a rather odd choice to populate the hero category; but, giving fancy to a small child’s memories of actually having someone you look up to, they have endeared themselves to me and have been instrumental to a type of metamorphosis in my way of looking at things.

One of those “rather odd choices” is a man by the name of Bill Johnson and he will be speaking at a conference in Baltimore this week.

Like the child above anticipating seeing one of his heroes all those years ago, so today that same child (slightly older) is anticipating seeing Bill Johnson this week. I’m fortunate to be able to go to a conference where he will be speaking several times.

Why take so many words to say all of that? Because I’ll probably be posting several things from the conference this week and thought it might be prudent to let you in on what was going on so you could better appreciate my posts.

I’ve never been to Baltimore, but the anticipation of what will be there has already reached the same proportions of that of Bannon’s Buddies way back in the 60′s.

I wonder if they’ll have a catchy theme song…