Tuesday, March 9, 2004

TIME IS MARCHING ON, AND TIME . . . IS STILL . . . MARCHING ON: Three things that made me feel old today:
1. WrestleMania XX is Sunday. Twenty? Was it that long ago that my father took me and Todd to the Resorts Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City to watch a closed-circuit broadcast of Hulk Hogan and Mr. T's victory over Roddy Piper, Cowboy Bob Orton and Paul Orndorff? When a young nation saw King Kong Bundy set a then-record by pinning Philly's own S.D. "Special Delivery" Jones in only eight seconds, I was young then, too. Twenty years. Damn.

2. Someone in the office today was playing Blues Traveller's "But Anyway" from a mix CD, their first hit, which was released when he was in elementary school.

I was already in college.

3. This Friday night, the Amherst College Lord Jeffs (25-3) travel to Franklin & Marshall College to take on the New Jersey City University Golden Knights (22-6) in the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA Div III men's basketball tournament.

The last time the Jeffs travelled to Lancaster was 1994, my senior year, to face the #1 host F&M Diplomats. I was friends with most of the team, having been the team's beat reporter the prior season, and was doing the radio halftime and postgame work for the tournament while my freshman year roommate Graham Hunt did the play-by-play and color by himself, a trick he taught himself by listening to Washington Bullets' radio broadcasts. The Jeffs won that game in a stunning 80-71 upset, still one of the best games I've ever attended. (Rounding out the Amherst top four games of my tenure -- the Williams home win in 1994, the Anna Maria game in the ECAC tournament and the game at Westfield State that ended in fistfights during the postgame handshakes. But anyway.)

That was ten years ago. Graham's now a professor of music, the team's starting power forward is designing board games, and I've, wow, three years of law school, six years of lawyering, marriage, a daughter, a career shift . . . damn, ten years, but that game doesn't feel very long ago right now.

I'm feeling up for a road trip on Friday.

Anything making you feel old lately?

No comments:

Post a Comment