Aug. 18: "She had it comin' ''

Today was just my second day of fall classes and, as you might suspect, it requires a certain amount of adjustment.

Probably one of the biggest adjustments so far has been getting used to my parking situation. When I first enrolled in classes back in January, I managed to get a parking spot in the Commuter West parking lot, which was within easy walking distance of my classes. This semester, however, I procrastinated to the point where, when I applied for a parking decal, the only available spot was in the Coliseum Lot, about a mile-and-a-half from where my classes meet.

Fortunately, MSU has shuttle buses that service far-flung lots such as the Coliseum. So the trick has been figuring out what time I need to be at the stop to catch a bus that will get me to my classes on time.

I’ve been late to two classes, but not because of the bus. Rather, I arrived at my first class on both Wednesday and Thursday only to find out that the class had been moved to another building across campus. Of course, I wasn’t the only student to arrive late and both of my professors understood the situation.

But I have to confess that I boarded the shuttle bus in somewhat of a foul mood on Thursday. My first class on Thursday is College Algebra. I don’t like College Algebra. I don’t understand College Algebra. College Algebra is not my friend; it never has been. Most likely, College Algebra is going to mess up my otherwise pristine GPA.

So I was not happy as I boarded the bus, which was full to the point that only two seats were unoccupied, aisle seats near the back of the bus, opposite one another. On one side, sat a pretty little blonde co-ed. On the other side, was a dude. Can you guess which of the two seats I chose?

“Can I sit here?’’ I asked.

The co-ed didn’t answer. She rolled those big blue eyes of hers and snatched her enormous purse off the empty seat, her reaction being what you might expect had I asked to borrow her tooth-brush.

So I sat down on the other side, next to the dude, who sported a black T-Shirt with the message “I am ashamed of what I did for a Klondyke Bar’’ written across the front.

“How’s it going?’’ I asked, chucking at this T-shirt.

“Not bad,’’ he said. “It would be better if it wasn’t so early.’’

I looked at my watch: It was 9:10 a.m. I guess we have a different definition of “early.’’

As the bus meandered its way across campus, I was able to learn the following about the dude next to me. His name is Kyle. He’s a sophomore from Jackson. He’s majoring in Chemical Engineering. His first class on Thursday is Calculus II. Strangely, the fact that he was starting the day with a math class did not put him in a foul mood at all.

“It’s not hard,’’ he said.

Maybe, I thought, but on the other hand, this guy thinks 9:10 a.m. is “early.’’

Kyle was pleasant enough company, but for some reason I couldn’t quit thinking about the snub I had received from the blonde sitting across the aisle from me.

Normally, I am the kind to take such slights, condescensions and minor acts of rudeness in stride. But I was going to College Algebra, so I wasn’t in a forgiving mood.

I look across the aisle at the blonde and noticed she was wearing a white T-Shirt with the words “Mississippi State Baseball’’ written on it.

A devious idea popped suddenly into my head.

I looked over toward her until she felt the weight of my stare. Tipping my head so that I could gaze over the lens of my sunglasses, arching an eyebrow and using my most leering tone of voice, I asked, “So, sugar, what’s your favorite position?’’

She recoiled in disgust, her blue eyes shooting darts at me.

I let that question hang in the air for a moment, savoring the delicious aroma of co-ed smoke. Then, pointing to her shirt, I said in my most innocent voice, “you know, baseball position? I like shortstop myself.’’

Her face turned a bright, blushing red. As she was struggling to fashion a response, I turned back to Kyle and asked him how many hours he was taking this semester.

She never did answer. As the bus rolled to the final stop five minutes later, she bolted from the bus, her face still a radiating shade of red.

OK. So maybe that was sort of a mean thing to do. But, hey, I was on my way to College Algebra. Besides, if everything about college life can be a learning experience, I like to think I left her with a valuable lesson: Never roll you eyes at an old person unless the person is one of your parents. We may be old, but you DO NOT want to cross us on a day we have College Algebra.

I arrived at my College Algebra class 10 minutes early, learned the class had been switched to another classroom across campus and finally slipped into a seat just as the professor was beginning class.

As she was going over the syllabus, I stared with horror at the blackboard behind her. It was full of all sorts of numbers, letters and odd lines and slashes.

I like to think that I am open-minded, tolerant person. But I will confess I can be close-minded and deeply prejudiced on some subjects. One of those subjects is mixed marriages of numbers and letters. In my view, math classes should content themselves with numbers and leave the alphabet out of it. Same goes for language classes: Stick to the letters, words and phrases and leave the numbers to people like Kyle.

But College Algebra has no sense of propriety. It brazenly throws a letter (usually “X’’ or “Y’’) right up next to a 7 or a 3 without regard to the tender sensibilities of traditionalists like me.

So, as I stared at the blackboard, the numbers and letters seemed to me to form some sort of Hieroglyphic message. After 10 minutes of careful scrutiny, I translated Problem No. 1 thusly: “In the third year of the square root of 7 to the third power, the Great King Xerxes decreed that all males under the age of (X x 3) – (2 x Y squared) would be 13 cubed.’’

To my dismay, this was not quite right.

The professor, having finished reading the syllabus, finally turned to the blackboard. At that point she said something that made my blood run cold:

“OK. These problems are all just really a review of what you have already learned before,’’ she said. “We’ll just go over them quickly just to refresh your memory. You learned all this in high school.’’

High school? I haven't been in high school in 35 years! All I remember learning in high school was that if you stare at Julie Tutor's long, shapely legs long enough, eventually she'll catch on and give you that disppointed look that says, "I would be less ashamed of you if you were a cuter boy.''

Back then, when I was teen-ager, I worked one summer at my cousin’s produce business. One of my co-workers there was a shiftless, lazy, perpetually drunk middle-aged drifter who - having accomplished so very much in life - felt it was his duty to pass along to me the wisdom he had acquired on his way to current lofty condition.

“Always fall behind early,’’ he once told me solemnly. “It gives you more time to catch up.’’

Well, all these years later, I find that I have taken his advice, at least as far as College Algebra is concerned. I was behind before I sat down, it turns out.

Fortunately, nobody rolled their eyes at me on the shuttle ride back to my car.

Good thing.

Aug. 14: "When Cats Fly''

This afternoon, I will return to Starkville after spending my break between the end of summer school and the start of fall classes at my friend’s home in rural Pickens County, Alabama.

It has been a good break. In two weeks, I’ve grown accustomed to sitting on the seat of a tractor and the fields around Joy’s place, all freshly bush-hogged, display my handiwork. I also took out an old fence line, weeded flower beds, trimmed some trees and performed a multitude of other duties during my time here.

In the afternoons, we retired to her front porch and watched the world go by, at least the part of the world that came rumbling down the stretch of dirt road in front of her little cottage, each car or truck trailing a fog of orange Alabama dust in its wake. I told Joy that if I lived here, I believe I’d just buy an orange vehicle and be done with it. A car-wash in this part of the world lasts only until the key hits the ignition.

I have been blissfully unaware of the “news’’ of the world, mainly because the TV hasn’t been on since I arrived. But, of course, the real news – the kind that really has some actual bearing on a person’s life – hardly comes via the airwaves anyway.

So if you were to ask me what the news has been here, I would say that it’s been a quiet couple of weeks. Probably the biggest development during my stay here has been the Redistribution of the Cat Population. I’m guessing this wasn’t covered on Fox News or CNN, so this is probably the first you have heard about it.

This is probably not big news to most folks, I realize, but it’s a major development for Elsie Price, who I am sure is happy to be rid of the Flying Cat population at her house.

I realize that this all warrants some explanation.

When Joy relocated from Jackson to the family property here in Alabama, she brought with her a couple of house cats – Bella and Lacey. At first, Joy and the cats moved in with Elsie, Joy’s mom. Each day, Joy would get up and go a few hundred yards down the dirt road to make ready her little cottage, which was once occupied by her aunt. She worked all day at the cottage, returning to her mom’s home in the evenings.

Bella and Lacey are sisters from the same litter, Joy says. I suspect it would be more accurate to call them half-sisters. Bella is jet black with just a spot of white fur on her chest and belly. Lacey is a Siamese of some sort, white with a blend of beige, tan and brown with four white feet that Joy calls “her snowshoes.’’ The striking difference in their appearance suggests different fathers.

Joy says that a female cat can be impregnated by multiple males and deliver the babies in the same litter, you know, sorta like what happens on “Jersey Shore’’ every week.

Anyway, Bella and Lacey settled in at her mom’s house. Because Joy is an independent contractor – a project engineer who specializes in nuclear power – and often is away on business for a month or two at a time, it made sense that Bella and Lacey would make her mom’s house their permanent residence.

But a couple of developments began to complicate matters.

First, Joy’s mom already has two cats – Tiger and Bama. They are strictly outdoor cats and presented no problem at first. But soon, Lacey and Bella began to notice that, although outdoor living lacked certain conveniences – upholstered furniture and air-conditioning to name two – Bama and Tiger seemed to have a pretty interesting life. Ultimately, Lacy and Bella were able to convince Joy’s mom to let them go outside from time to time. But as the weeks went by, the two cats began to like it so much that it was difficult to get them back in the house. Ultimately, nothing short of a thunderstorm could induce them to come inside.

This soon became a cause of concern. Unlike Tiger and Bama, who grew up as outdoor cats, Bella and Lacey are city cats who had always lived indoors. As a result, the fear was that Lacey and Bella lacked the necessary survival skills to live in a place that is populated by coyotes, foxes and snakes. Bama and Tiger knew how to avoid such predators, but Lacey and Bella were innocents, and it seemed only a matter of time before curiosity might indeed kill the cats.

So the decision was made to capture Bella and Lacey and return them, on a permanent basis, to the status of indoor cats. Of course, nobody asked Bella and Lacey if this was their preference. Suffice to say, they did not accept the transition gracefully.

First, they were forever waiting by the door, ready for any chance to bolt outside. That strategy produced only very limited success, however.

So Lacey and Bella came up with a different tactic. They decided they would pretend to be deathly afraid of the carpet.

This is how Bella and Lacey became that rare breed of animal known as Flying Cat. At her mom’s house, their feet never hit the floor. Rather, they leap from one piece of furniture to the next, like a man might jump from one river rock to another to get to the other shore. Did you ever see the map in those magazines that are stuffed into the seatback pocket of an airplane that show all of the places the airline services? I suspect Bella and Lacey have created a similar mental map of the house: “Cat Flight 104 from Recliner to Coffee Table is now ready for departure.’’

The house is clean, nicely furnished, comfortable. But even the coziest of ambiences is altered when the air is thick with cats.

Unlike me, Joy and her mom are convinced that the cats’ sudden and almost pathological fear of the carpet is grounded in truth rather than conspiracy. Fleas, they say. Their theory is that Bella and Lacey picked up fleas from outside and brought them into the house, where the vermin had nested in the carpet. Joy went online and read that cats will avoid any area which they know is inhabited by fleas. So, the thinking goes, there must be fleas in the carpet.

It’s a reasonable idea, of course. But the theory breaks down a bit when you consider the measures taken to address the problem and how ineffective those solutions have been. The carpets have been treated not once, but twice, with flea-killer. The carpets have been shampooed. Both cats have been given flea-preventative medications. And yet, the cats still avoid the carpet like a debutante avoids a Wal-Mart.

It is for that reason that I believe this fear of the carpet is a recent fabrication. If dogs rarely think, cats think entirely too much, if you ask me. They seem to me to always be carefully calculating their next move.

A few days ago, Joy decided to move the cats out of her mom’s house and into her little cottage. I am happy to report that Lacey and Bella have ceased their flying. I think maybe they realized that the strategy wasn’t working. At any rate, they walk around Joy’s house, showing no aversion to her rugs.

But somehow I don’t think we’ve seen the last of the cats’ plots to return to outdoor living. Rather, I think they are formulating a new strategy. Heaven only knows what it might be. I mean, if they’ll concoct a Flying Cat strategy, there is no limit to the extremes to which they are willing to go.

For now, though, they have offered no clue. I am watching them carefully, however. They are up to something, I am sure.

Aug. 12: "Escape to Alabama''

I’ve been spending the two weeks between the end of summer school and the beginning of fall classes at my friend’s house in Carrollton, Ala., which is about a pig squeal over the Alabama-Mississippi line.

Actually, Joy’s place is not in Carrollton at all, but about 12 miles outside of town. She has been living here on her family’s property for about a year now after leaving her job in Jackson to become an independent contractor. Joy lives in a cozy little cottage that once belonged to her aunt. The cottage is one of three houses on the family’s 160-acre plot of land that has been in her family for close to 100 years.

Of the 160 acres, about half of it has been cleared, mainly because her maternal grandparents once farmed the land. But it has been probably 50 years since the last crop was put in, so – aside from a 10-acre pasture that his home to a couple of fat and happy mares – most of the cleared land exists only to be bush-hogged. About the time you have finished bush-hogging everything, it’s time to start all over.

So the past two weeks have been productive. Joy, who is as comfortable on the seat of a tractor as she is on the floor of a nuclear power plant, took over the bush-hogging duties, which left me to do other things.

One day I took out an old fence line, using a shovel and a sledge-hammer to remove about 30 posts that has been sunk about half-way to China. It was hard, hot exhausting work, but when I had managed to get the last post out of the ground, I looked upon my work with great satisfaction. I’ve heard about 10 comments about how great it looks, mostly the sound of my own voice. But it was a job well done, even if the reaction of others has been a bit subdued.

We’ve been busy doing odd jobs every day. We’ve weeded her mom’s flower beds, repaired a broken weed-eater, sanded her front porch, which will be painted if it ever decides not to rain every day as it has for the past four or five days.

At about 5 in the afternoon each day, drenched in sweat and grime, we stagger up on the front porch and sip from long glasses that, because of condensation, are soon as wet on the outside as they are on the inside. We talk a little between long silences as we absently watch the little corner of her world.

The property is located along a dirt road of about eight miles that connects one narrow stretch of black-top road to another. Because it is neither a major road nor a shortcut to anywhere, the people who come down the road trailing a cloud of red Alabama dust are few and familiar. Joy’s little cottage sits about 30 yards back from the little road. From her porch, we can survey about a four-hundred yard section of the road, from her mom’s house, which sits high on a hill in one direction, to another hill distinguished by two giant oaks, where her grandparents’ house used to be.

Because the traffic is limited to those who live along this dirt road and Joy grew up here, she knows every vehicle that comes into view. She not only knows their names, but where they have been and where they are going.

“There’s (so-and-so),’’ she notes as a truck approaches at one end of the road. “He’s going to see his mama.’’

“There’s (whoever),’’ she says. “He’s just got off work. He works for the county and lives in the house next to where that old trailer used to be.’’

Things like that.

About 3 every afternoon, a little red car comes scooting down the road.

“That’s Mr. O,’’ Joy says. “He’s going to (so-and-so’s) house to have a beer. You watch. He’ll be back through here in about an hour. Then, in about another hour (so-and-so) will come down the road to Mr. O’s to have a beer at his place. They’ve been doing this every day for as long as I can remember.’’

Every car or truck that passes slows in front of Joy’s little house to wave. We wave back. My presence here is bound to be the hot topic up and down this dirt road, Joy says, laughing.

On weekend mornings, Hugh appears at one end of the road riding his big tractor and pulling his heavy-duty bush-hog. Hugh is a man in his mid-50s who never married and doesn’t smoke or drink. He seems to spend almost all of his weekends on that big tractor. Hugh bush-hogs the banks of the road and the steep hills, ditches and rough ground that the people who live along the road have neither the equipment nor the nerve to tackle. As far as anyone knows, he isn’t paid to do it. It’s just something he does.

But the traffic is pretty light. Most of the time, we just watch the birds that frequent either at the bird-feeder in her yard.

Because I am an early riser, I’ve spent the early-morning hours sitting on the porch drinking my coffee and reflecting on my life’s journey – where it has lead, where it might yet lead. At that hour, I have the company of a pair of cardinals, mates who come to have breakfast at the bird-feeder. They will swoop down to eat the bird-seed and they fly off across the road, disappearing into the kudzu canopy, only to repeat the circuit several times over the next hour or so. Nobody stays at home to eat anymore, I guess.

The other afternoon, Joy and I noticed a group of about six cardinals gathering at the bird-feeder, all females. I speculated that the girls had left the kids at home with their dads to have a Girls Night Out and, in the Southern tradition, decided to go to the buffet. I wondered what the topic of conversation would be among them as they flitted and chirped and chatted around the bird feeder. They don’t watch “The Bachelorette’’ or “American Idol,’’ I’m guessing, so I have no idea what they might have to talk about.

The birds are not the only animals who call the area home, of course. One day just after dark, I noted the vague shape of an armadillo waddling through the yard while Joy was in the house making supper.

Joy was irritated by this development. “Damn armadillo,’’ she said. “I woulda shot it if I had seen it.’’

Why? Well, for some reason this armadillo – despite hundreds of acres of perfectly suitable locations - has chosen to dig his holes next to Joy’s propane tank.

There are bigger animals that live along this dirt road, too.

The road is dotted with deer stands, and for good reason. The woods along the road are teeming with deer. I’ve only seen one buck so far and a small one at that. But it seems like every time you drive down the road, you spot a doe.

It seems to me that the main diversion of the doe that live here is to stand in the middle of the road and wait until a car approaches, and then jump back into the underbrush. It must be terribly boring to be a doe in this part of the world, I reckon.

I suppose to some people, life for the human animals our here in the country is sorta boring, too.

It suits me just fine, though. Somehow, it’s soothing to be out here, getting dirty and sweaty and then spending the afternoons and evenings on the front porch.

I haven’t watched more than 10 minutes of TV since I’ve been here and that’s a wonderful thing. Out here on the front porch, you watch the world and get to make up stories about what you see. It’s not that way when you are sitting in front of a TV: Somebody else gets to make up the stories and you just have to sit there and take it.

I like this way much better.

In a little more than a week, I have found that there are any number of stories that I am itching to tell, including the story of Skylar the Jealous Terrier, The Great Cat Migration and Homecoming Day at the Crossroads Baptist Church to name just a few.

But for now, I’m going to keep those stories percolating in my mind. Its 10 a.m. and time to get busy.

Aug. 5: "B'' Material

The streak is over. It ended at roughly 11:15 a.m. on Wednesday, July 24, although I wasn’t aware that it had ended until a day later.

The streak to which I refer was the unblemished march of A’s since my return to school almost 30 years after I had dropped out of college. I was running the table: Geography, Journalism Ethics (yes, there really is a class on journalism ethics, believe it or not), Mass Media Law, Spanish I, Public Speaking, U.S. History Since 1945, Mass Media in Society. A’s in all of them.

In my mind, those A’s that marched so proudly in some grand procession of perfection stirred in me some dreamer’s belief that my life could amount to more than a cautionary tale.

And then came Wednesday and my Final in Spanish II. For the entire term, I had maintained an A average. But on Wednesday, I was far from an A student. Here is the weird part, though. After I finished the test, I figured I had done fairly well – maybe a 92 or 93, certainly no worse than mid-80s.

I was already counting this un-hatched chicken, you might say.

I went on line a day later, mainly just to stare with great satisfaction at my grades for the term. There was the expected “A’’ in my Mass Media in Society Class, but there was this odd symbol next to Spanish II. It read “B’’.

“B’’

That’s what it said. “B’’ which is short for “Be serious. You’re not kidding anybody, loser.’’

I emailed my professor to ask what I had scored on the final. He responded that I had made a 77. My face went flush with embarrassment. Really? A 77? Pathetic, by far the worst test score I had made since returning to school.

And so I got a “B’’ for the class.

I know what you are thinking, of course. You are thinking that I am overreacting. Those who I have told about my “B’’ have rushed to point out that a “B’’ is hardly a mark of failure.

I wish I could see it that way, I really do.

But when I see that “B,’’ it says to me, “second place.’’ It says, “Good, but not the best.’’ It says “You’ve fallen short of your goal. Again. Like always.’’

Second place is pretty good, sometimes.

But sometimes, second place is awful. I’ve come in second in three relationships and the rejection is more painful each time. The last one almost ruined me. In fact, I wonder if it hasn’t ruined me. I am a joke to her and the “winner’’ she plans to marry in a few months, I realize.

There is a lady in my life now – a smart, beautiful, stunning woman - that deserves to be loved. But I am afraid to go there, afraid that it will end in another second place, no matter how promising and hopeful the prospects seem to be right now.

It always ends that way. In Spanish II, I was an “A’’ student every day - until the last day. Then I was a bum and it didn’t matter if I was an “A’’ student before.

It always ends like that. And each time, I shrink a little and the light becomes a bit more dim. Today, I’m feeling around in the shadows.

This morning, I emailed an old acquaintance, Charlie Mitchell. I knew Charlie back when he was the editor at the Vicksburg paper. Charlie is now an assistant dean at the Ole Miss journalism school. I wrote to him, explaining about how I had been in the newspaper business for a long time until I went to prison for DUI. I wrote that I was working hard to redeem myself and asked for his advice on whether I should pursue a Masters in Journalism at Ole Miss or, instead, stay at State and get a Masters in English. My plan is (was?) to teach English Comp and/or Journalism at the university level.

Charlie wrote back to tell me that either path would be OK. He also said that I might face some obstacles.

He wrote:

“In the big picture, all colleges, public and private, manage their image with unprecedented intensity because they rely so heavily on donations and good will. The knee jerk at some will be not to run the risk of a headline reading, "Ex-con teaching our little children." As a journalist, you know the story could just as easily be about focus and redemption. The challenge is to find a school willing to take that risk.’

There’s nothing inherently wrong about that response, of course.

On the other hand, it wasn’t something I didn’t already realize.

In reality, I wrote to my old acquaintance hoping he would say something like, “Come on up to Ole Miss! We’ll help! We’ll make it work, pull some strings, give you a hand!’’

It is not what he said, of course, and the impression I got from the email was akin to what you encounter on dating sites when a person who isn’t interested sends out the standard “Good Luck in Your Search’’ message.

One of the reasons I came back to Mississippi was the naïve belief that there might be some people here who, being in a position to help me, might show some compassion.
Clearly, I was wrong. I suspect Charlie sees me as damaged goods, someone unworthy of anything but condescension. I know damn well I’d be the best student in that graduate program, but clearly, I represent some sort of “risk.’’ I wish someone who feels that way would actually tell me what “risk’’ they think I represent. But it’s no use to argue.

I’ve learned a little about a lot of things since returning to school – a little geography, a little history, a very little Spanish. But what I’ve learned most of all is that you can be an “A’’ student every day, but that doesn’t matter if you blow the Finals.

Sometimes a life is defined by its worst moment and every effort to escape it is an exercise in self-delusion. You are forever viewed as a “risk.’’ It doesn’t really matter how sorry you are for your mistake, how hard you have worked to overcome it. People love second chances, as long as they’re not the ones providing them.

The women I have loved and lost would probably tell you that, too. They would probably tell you I’m a good person. But, you know, just not good enough.

I’m just a “B’’ kind of guy, I guess.

July 30: "NFL dreamin' ''

The NFL Labor impasse ended last week. It was written about in all the newspapers. But it was written more eloquently on the face of Blakely Feld, who sits next to me in my Mass Media in Society Class.

Blakely, a 21-year co-ed from Alabama, fairly bounced into class that Monday afternoon, smiling broadly.

“The lock-out is over!’’ she said. “I’m so excited!’’

No doubt, NFL fans everywhere were excited when the NFL owners and players reached an agreement on a 10-year collective bargaining agreement, insuring that the 2011-12 season will proceed without delay or interruption.

Even so, few of us have what you would call a vested interest in the matter.

And that sets Blakely Feld, who will finish her undergraduate degree in Communications/Public Relations next week, apart from most of us. Blakely Feld met a boy soon after arriving at Mississippi State four years ago, an MSU football player, it turns out. They were married last year.

Her husband, Aaron Feld, is not a household name, not even on the MSU campus. You won't find his name on an All-American list or even on the All-SEC team. He was never a team captain and hardly ever was deemed important enough to be interviewed during his years at MSU.

And yet Feld is one of the few MSU players who will have a chance to join that elite group of people who can call themselves NFL players.

Feld’s opportunity relies on one simple skill: He snaps a football. Feld has snapped the ball for MSU on kicks and punts since his freshman year. That tells you one very important – you could say essential – fact. He has done his job consistently well.

And for snappers, doing their job consistently well is the critical factor. Other players can miss an assignment or make a mistake without jeopardizing their careers, provided their successes exceed their failures.

But snappers have no room for error. During a typical game, they’ll snap the ball maybe a dozen times and, if all goes as expected, hardly anyone will note their performance. But one bad snap can alter the outcome of a game. You mess up as a snapper and your job prospects cloud considerably.

When I first met Blakely and she told me about her husband, I asked her if she had read the book, “The Long Snapper.’’ She said she had heard of it, but hadn’t read it. I told her I had the book, but when I got home I realized that book was in storage at my sister’s house in Tupelo.

The book is about former LSU football player Brian Kinchen, who has spent 13 seasons in the NFL, primarily in the role of long snapper. The story begins with Kinchen back in his native Lousiana, teaching at a middle school and out of the game for three years.

In December of 2003, The New England Patriots lost their long snapper a few days before the playoffs started and called Kinchen for a tryout. The story follows Kinchen’s experience with the Patriots, from beating out another long snapper who had been called in for a tryout to the Super Bowl, where – as fate would have it – Kinchen, tormented by fears he would make a critical mistake, was called upon to make a snap on what proved to be the game-winning field goal.

“I need to read that book,’’ Blakely Feld after I told her what the book was about.

In the days after the lockout ended, Blakely gave us regular updates on her husband’s situation. There were several teams who had expressed some interest in signing her husband to a free-agent contract. She seemed equally excited about each team. Even the thought of her husband playing in frigid Buffalo seemed wonderful to her, although she did fret about her inadequate wardrobe for such a harsh climate.

Then, last Thursday, Blakely sorta levitated her way into class.

“He signed with Tampa Bay!’’ she squealed.

Blakely is s sweet girl, and it was fun to see her so excited.

Now, I have no idea how her story will turn out. The fact is that half of the players under contract today will be out of a job within a month. Tampa’s long-snapper last year was injured, so there is an opening for the job. But there are, of course, no guarantees and I am certain that Feld won’t be in the only long-snapper the Bucs will be auditioning this month. It’s not a sure thing but any means.

Of course, that is a possibility I am sure Blakely Feld is well aware of. And if she was not aware, there was no inclination on my part to point out the sobering prospects.

By the middle of the week, Blakely Feld will finish school and fly to Tampa to join her husband at training camp. How long the Felds will be there, I don’t know.

I’d like to think that her husband will get the job and have a long career. If he does, he’ll make probably in the neighborhood of $350,000 per year, which is a heckuva lot better pay than most recent graduates could even hope to make.

But he may also find that his NFL dream lasted only a few short weeks.

In either case, I think the Felds will do just fine. They are young, in love and both have college degrees. It’s probably a long shot, this NFL dream. But it’s a shot.

If it doesn’t work out, the Felds will have to find a new dream, even if the new dream seems dull by comparison to this one.

But life is like that sometimes.

Whether it is love or a career or any number of things that shape a person’s life here on earth, you have to let go of an old dream before you can dream a new one.

That’s been my experience, at least.

July 10: "Joy''

A few of you have noted that presence of a certain fetching brunette on my Facebook photo gallery, whose company I am enjoying of late.

Her name is Joy and she lives in Alabama, about 20 miles from Columbus near a town whose name mysteriously evades me, even though I’ve been through it several times on visits to see her and I’ve heard the name of the town many, many times since Joy and I began seeing each other about six weeks ago. It starts with a “C’’ and, somehow, I can never remember the name of the town. There may be some pathology associated with this. I find that I am mystified by meaningless things these days.

For example, I had a Spanish test on Friday. In that test, we were supposed to conjugate verbs in the past tense according to the “fill in the blank’’ sentence. We were given the verb in English, so we had to know the Spanish verb and be able to conjugate it according to person, gender and number. As fate would have it, the one verb I could not recall wound up in three different questions. It was the verb “to arrive.’’ I guessed “salir’’ and conjugated the verb accordingly in each of the questions. But I am not sure at all that “salir’’ is the Spanish verb for “to arrive.’’

And two days later, I’m still not sure what the verb is. You would think I would have looked it up, but oddly enough I haven’t. Last night, I dreamed about whether “salir’’ is or isn’t the Spanish verb for “to arrive.’’ I cannot tell you how often I have worried over this matter during the past 48 hours. And yet, even now, I don’t look it up.

So, yes, I may have some “mental health’’ issues.

But my mental state is not the purpose of this post. The purpose of the post is to tell you about my new friend.

As I said, her name is Joy. I have no idea what the town is where she lives. I’m pretty sure it’s not “Salir, Alabama’’ though.

The first thing you might notice about Joy, should you meet her, is that she is tall and lean. She says she’s 5-11. I say she’s 6-foot. We went to dinner last week and she wore heels. She TOWERED over me and I’m 5-foot-11.

She is the youngest of four girls and lives in a little house that is part of her family’s 140-acre spread.

She is an independent contractor, an expert on nuclear power plants and has been all over the U.S. and the world with her work. In a decidedly man’s world, she commands respect.

That’s one side of her.

The other side of Joy is revealed only when she is back “home’’ in Alabama. The woman works like field hand – she can handle any repair job you can think of. She’s comfortable with almost any tool or piece of equipment you put in front of her and it’s not uncommon to see her soaked with sweat and smiling through an inch of dust and grime from a long day’s work on “the property.’’ She can shoot a deer, catch a fish, build a duck blind, drive a tractor and bush-hog a field.

And yet, she can knock your eyes out in a cocktail dress and rock a bikini in a way that women 20 years younger can only envy. She is bronzed from the sun and strong from hard manual labor. But she is in every way as feminine as any model.

In fact, she was a model. She was featured in magazines and sales fliers and was the month of May in a “Girls of LSU’’ swimsuit calendar in the mid-80s when she was living in Baton Rouge, even though she never attended a class at LSU (She got her degree from MUW).

She is a woman of remarkable energy; a vibrant, passionate, caring woman.

And she likes me, which I find as perplexing as Spanish verbs.

June 6: "Estudiante''

I’m not sure what I expected summer school to be.

Whatever it was, it was wrong.

As of Monday, I have now attended each of my two classes – Spanish I and History of the U.S. After World War II – four times. Already, I’ve had one major test (in Spanish) and two quizzes (history) with my first essay due on Wednesday and my second Spanish test on Thursday.

What I am discovering if that summer school is not day camp. It’s work, and lots of it - daily reading assignments in history and web assignments for Spanish, which are due on Friday each week.

Unlike the classes I took during the spring semester, you never had a day between classes to finish your assigned work. When you have assigned reading on Tuesday, you had better be able to discuss in on Wednesday.

Far more than is the case during the spring semester, summer school requires daily homework.

I guess, had I thought about it, I would have understood why it must be so. Obviously, when you are compressing a semester’s worth of material into fewer than five weeks, the pace is accelerated. In fact, by the end of the week, I’ll be 40 percent finish with the courses.

One benefit of summer school – small classes. There are 16 students in my Spanish class, just 12 in my history class.

I am really enjoying the history class, since it touches on a subject that I had already gravitated toward. About a month ago, I finished reading David Halberstam’s “The Best and the Brightest,’’ a masterful examination of how the U.S. became hopelessly, tragically entangled in Vietnam.

And just this week, I finished reading Michael Korda’s “ Ike: An American Hero’’ a thorough, if fawning, biography of Dwight Eisenhower.

Both books are of obvious relevance to the course.

There is another cause for optimism as far as the course is concerned: All the quizzes and tests are essay-style. In fact, our three main tests and the Final are really three-page essays that we get to write from home, using our notes, on the day before the test is due. I’ve always felt that essay-writing plays to my strength, so I feel very confident about this class.

Spanish is going well, too, although the pace is alarming. Still, I’ve picked up enough Spanish in my years in Arizona to have at least mastered things like pronunciation.

I’ve also met a couple of friend in the class – Lauren is 22 and from Tupelo; Susan is 31 and is a grad student from Belmont. We meet at the library on the night before tests to study.

Hasta luego!