The Tao of Kenny Rogers

Photo by Radu Florin on Unsplash

In August of 1976, Don Schlitz wrote a country song that would later be made popular by Kenny Rogers. It entered pop culture with such fury that you can actually find an archived video on YouTube from 1979 of Kenny offering his last swallow of whiskey and a cigarette to a puppet on season four of The Muppet Show. Of all the iconic imagery in the lyrics, the single most memorable lines are ones that I have for years wholly mistaken as that said by…