A math professor and an English teacher is shaking their collective heads as they read that headline.
That’s okay and, I don’t care.
It may or may not come as a surprise to you, but I’m somewhat independent.
I enjoy walking alone as it offers a wonderful time for reflection.
I enjoy my time at home alone reading or watching TV.
I enjoy traveling alone as Highway 2 windshield time offers great meditation experiences.
And I enjoy working alone.
When I was a radio broadcast journalist, I was a one-man news department for over 20 years at KAMI in Cozad and KCOW in Alliance. I worked at my own pace and made all the decisions as to what should and shouldn’t go on the air. Yes, it led to a few confrontations with a body or two, but that’s okay. Those disagreements justified the preservation of my independence.
I’m sure that as you look back on your life, you, at some point, can relate.
It also should not come as a shock that, as I child, I hated organized sports.
However, I loved pick-up football games.
Twelve or fifteen of my buddies and I would gather on the playground of the Valparaiso (Neb.) Elementary school and engage in some of the most vicious games of tackle football imaginable.
Of course, this occurred only when the teacher who was assigned to playground duty – if she remembered she had the duty – was nowhere in sight. And in the late 1960s and early 1970s this was a frequent occurrence.
To put in simply and succinctly, any adult who dared offer supervision of my childhood playground was public enemy number one.
I also participated in some wonderful pick-up tackle football games held away from the Valparaiso Elementary playground.
The most vivid took place on October 7, 1972.
The eastern Nebraska sky was blue, the trees were red, yellow, gold and brown, and Bob Devaney’s Nebraska Cornhusker football team had an open date.
My mother soothed her 13-year-old son’s mild anxiety attack of what to do on an autumn afternoon void of Nebraska football by driving me to Valparaiso to spend the day with one of my 8th grade classmates, Terry Christensen.
Terry lived on the extreme southwest edge of Valparaiso near the old Valparaiso High football field that nestled with the Union Pacific railroad tracks and State Highway 79.
After recruiting a dozen of the neighborhood boys, we chose up sides and engaged in a full-fledged, smash-mouth tackle football game that lasted nearly two hours.
It was a backyard gridiron war void of helmets, pads, referees, moms, dads or girls.
But it was loaded with blood, sweat, adolescent profanity and black & blue marks that lasted for days.
I took a hit so hard my chest ached for nearly a week.
It was the greatest feeling in the world!
Ironically, this past Saturday, October 14, 2023, Matt Rhule’s Huskers have an open date and, just like 51 years ago, the western Nebraska sky was blue, and the trees offered various shades of yellow, gold, brown and red.
It’s safe to say that my pick-up tackle football games are long ago history, so my wife and daughters did not worry about the old man doing something stupid.
The truth is, I spent the day at two Alliance craft shows.
However, if you ever see a group of boys involved in a rock ‘em sock ‘em game of tackle football on these glorias fall afternoons – leave them be.
Let them perfect their craft of boys being boys.
You don’t want to be labeled as public enemy number one by tossing an interference flag on their independence.