Features

Editor’s Note

When I’ve consumed a lot of fluids my body tells me it’s time to visit the lavatory.

It’s a simple concept, listening to what your body tells you you need to do. I don’t want to mess myself, that would be embarrassing.

I think this is why potty training is so difficult.

We’re on our fourth student, the last of his class, and he’s falling behind in his studies. His predecessors, I remember a few bumps in the road, but never this bad. The one time our oldest flunked resulted in some footprints in the classroom, an experience I’ll never forget thank God we were renting that facility at the time.

The second and third students were pretty easy. I don’t have any horrific moments to recall, the sort that turn my dreams into nightmares.

Our last pupil, however, doesn’t seem to care that he’s failing miserably. We’ve tried tutors, guide books and even some motivational sing-a-longs. Nothing.

He’s a free-wheeling student, this one, and I think that’s his problem. He has no shame that he’s failing, I think he’s getting a kick out of it. What does he care? Someone is going to give him a new sheet of paper if he scribbles all over the one we just gave him. If he wants to express himself he’s going to, whenever and wherever he pleases. Maybe he’ll grow up to be an artist.

I know he’s going to graduate eventually, No Child Left Behind, right? But darn it all, I thought all my students were going to skip grades and graduate early. Paper is expensive these days I’m tempted to buy some sort of paper I can recycle for him to scribble all over, again and again until he gets it.

And he’s a troublemaker to boot; the goofball in the class. He knows he’s the nonconformist, provoking us with his hand signals to tell us he’s filled out his paper and ready to turn it in for a new sheet. He uses his desk as a playground, constantly taking it apart so he doesn’t have to sit. I’m running out of paper and patience.

I know we don’t want our kids to grow up too fast, but darn it, this one needs to graduate and graduate soon. We don’t rent anymore and I’m worried the school janitor is growing tired of cleaning up.

To the Class of ’16 hopefully.

Features

Editor’s Note

I don’t foresee myself getting in early on any upcoming trends so I have to hold on tight to the one’s I was a part of.

Fantasy sports, and Fantasy Football in particular, have exploded over recent years into one of the country’s largest forms of gambling. Leagues range from the sort that have you select “X” amount of players on a week-to-week basis in hopes of defeating the field, while others get as involved as including large draft boards, dynasty rules and big payouts.

My fantasy career began at the ripe young age of 10. The Buffalo Bills were dominating the AFC and fantasy studs included Hall of Famers like Jerry Rice, Thurman Thomas and Troy Aikman. I don’t know how many fantasy leagues were around in the early 90s but I feel I got in at the ground level.

It was a fun league, something I wish I could find again. Live-person drafts took place in the OLPH Church basement. We’d set up the tables in a large square so we would be forced to keep a good poker face, lay out our fantasy draft guides purchased from a magazine rack (usually outdated by the time we actually drafted) and sharpened our pencils. It was old school.

I miss the thrill of pulling a number out of a hat to see where my father and I would draft. We were Team Rukavina my father and I he was the owner but I was the general manager, making all the picks. He fronted the big cash to get us into the game – $30. It wasn’t about winning a lot of money back then, it still isn’t for me, but the gambling bug has grabbed hold of the once proud, historic institution that is Fantasy Football. It has sort of mirrored the negatives now surrounding the NFL big money, big business.

It was a business in the early 90s, too, I’m not naive. But without all the daily analysis on sports shows, online articles and media attention it wouldn’t feel as in-your-face as it does today. “This guy wants to be the highest paid cornerback,” “This guy deserves a long-term contract,” etc. Back in the day, I just followed the game and picked players I liked because of the way they played. It didn’t hurt if the player was good on top of it. Jerry Rice led me to back-to-back championships and turned me into a lifelong fan.

As a Buffalo Bills fan, fantasy football has made Sundays a little easier to deal with. Sure, the Bills lost – again – but at least my fantasy team triumphed; Bills down by 40 and little reason to watch in the fourth quarter? Time to turn my attention to the ticker at the bottom of the screen to see who just scored on my team. In the early 90s, it was fun to pick Bills players and actually have them be the stars on my team. Now, I pick them for the novelty of it and hope I can cheer twice as hard on Sundays when both my teams win.

Sometimes neither of my teams win and the dark cloud that is already a Monday is made that much more worse. Before the Internet boom and online programs, we would tally our scores using Monday’s box scores in The Buffalo News. The paper was the designated medium for gathering statistics. At the end of the day we’d actually call our opponent to verify we each tallied the same total for our teams and the winner would call the commissioner to submit the results. Today, Yahoo does everything I just have to make sure I’m not starting a guy on a bye-week.

I wasn’t going to do fantasy football this year; it would have been the first without it in 23 years. The commissioner of the league I was in last year messaged me a few days before the start of the new season to see if I was doing it I couldn’t say no.

I truly miss the personal touch fantasy football had back in the day, meeting with people, eating pizza, live drafting and pencil and paper scoring, but I was a child then. I’m older now, married with kids and I don’t have as much free time to freeload in some basement drafting players for my fantasy team. Nevertheless, I still make a point to carve out four hours of my Sunday afternoon to watch my beloved Bills, win or lose. And hey, at least this year like the 23 prior, I’ll have a backup team to root for should the inevitable happen.

Go Bills and Team Rukavina!

Features

Editor’s Note

I don’t foresee myself getting in early on any upcoming trends so I have to hold on tight to the one’s I was a part of.

Fantasy sports, and Fantasy Football in particular, have exploded over recent years into one of the country’s largest forms of gambling. Leagues range from the sort that have you select “X” amount of players on a week-to-week basis in hopes of defeating the field, while others get as involved as including large draft boards, dynasty rules and big payouts.

My fantasy career began at the ripe young age of 10. The Buffalo Bills were dominating the AFC and fantasy studs included Hall of Famers like Jerry Rice, Thurman Thomas and Troy Aikman. I don’t know how many fantasy leagues were around in the early 90s but I feel I got in at the ground level.

It was a fun league, something I wish I could find again. Live-person drafts took place in the OLPH Church basement. We’d set up the tables in a large square so we would be forced to keep a good poker face, lay out our fantasy draft guides purchased from a magazine rack (usually outdated by the time we actually drafted) and sharpened our pencils. It was old school.

I miss the thrill of pulling a number out of a hat to see where my father and I would draft. We were Team Rukavina my father and I he was the owner but I was the general manager, making all the picks. He fronted the big cash to get us into the game – $30. It wasn’t about winning a lot of money back then, it still isn’t for me, but the gambling bug has grabbed hold of the once proud, historic institution that is Fantasy Football. It has sort of mirrored the negatives now surrounding the NFL big money, big business.

It was a business in the early 90s, too, I’m not naive. But without all the daily analysis on sports shows, online articles and media attention it wouldn’t feel as in-your-face as it does today. “This guy wants to be the highest paid cornerback,” “This guy deserves a long-term contract,” etc. Back in the day, I just followed the game and picked players I liked because of the way they played. It didn’t hurt if the player was good on top of it. Jerry Rice led me to back-to-back championships and turned me into a lifelong fan.

As a Buffalo Bills fan, fantasy football has made Sundays a little easier to deal with. Sure, the Bills lost – again – but at least my fantasy team triumphed; Bills down by 40 and little reason to watch in the fourth quarter? Time to turn my attention to the ticker at the bottom of the screen to see who just scored on my team. In the early 90s, it was fun to pick Bills players and actually have them be the stars on my team. Now, I pick them for the novelty of it and hope I can cheer twice as hard on Sundays when both my teams win.

Sometimes neither of my teams win and the dark cloud that is already a Monday is made that much more worse. Before the Internet boom and online programs, we would tally our scores using Monday’s box scores in The Buffalo News. The paper was the designated medium for gathering statistics. At the end of the day we’d actually call our opponent to verify we each tallied the same total for our teams and the winner would call the commissioner to submit the results. Today, Yahoo does everything I just have to make sure I’m not starting a guy on a bye-week.

I wasn’t going to do fantasy football this year; it would have been the first without it in 23 years. The commissioner of the league I was in last year messaged me a few days before the start of the new season to see if I was doing it I couldn’t say no.

I truly miss the personal touch fantasy football had back in the day, meeting with people, eating pizza, live drafting and pencil and paper scoring, but I was a child then. I’m older now, married with kids and I don’t have as much free time to freeload in some basement drafting players for my fantasy team. Nevertheless, I still make a point to carve out four hours of my Sunday afternoon to watch my beloved Bills, win or lose. And hey, at least this year like the 23 prior, I’ll have a backup team to root for should the inevitable happen.

Go Bills and Team Rukavina!

Features

Editor’s Note

I have never known a year that didn’t revolve around a school year.

I work like most people not in the education field all year long. Sure, there’s some vacation time sprinkled in here and there, but not months. This isn’t a debate about the need or warrant for that amount of time off, my wife is a teacher, they need that time to decompress.

This is more about a realization that my mental calendar has known nothing outside of a year without school, in one form or another.

Like most people, you don’t really remember years one to five, you enter grade school, graduate high school around 17 or 18, enter college and graduate around 21, 22 or older depending on your degree. Then, if you’re lucky enough, you enter the workforce in your desired field.

In my case, I didn’t enter my field straight out of college. Regardless, school was still influencing my day-to-day life. My wife went for her master’s that year before becoming a teacher a year later. Mix in a few kids entering school a few years later and my life is now pretty cemented in the yearlong ebb and flow that is a school year.

I wonder sometimes if I was single, working day-to-day at my current job, if I’d be bored. Would the seasons all just blend together, would the years seem longer, would I enjoy the monotony of it all? And this isn’t to say this would be a boring routine, it’s just something I’ve never known.

With me working evenings during the school year, mostly out of convenience for lack of affordable child care (a topic for another day, I’m sure), our summers become a special time. I see my wife and kids more and I recharge. I can work a few days during the week sometimes and am able to watch live television in the evening for a change.

The rest of my year, beginning soon as my wife and kids head back to the classroom, is a glimpse into what my life would be like without a school year. It’s back to the daily grind: make the lunches, take the kids to school, pick them up from school, make dinner, say hi to my wife, go to work, come home, go to bed and do it all over again the next day. I think I’d go insane if that continued 24/7/365.

I guess I’m grateful my school career hasn’t ended just yet.