Care to stay with my stream of consciousness......

I'm not even sure I can!

ITEM: 25 years ago yesterday, I entered junior high school. The 8th grade, to be exact. The worst grade of my life. 25 years ago today I was called "braceface" by the blonde at the locker next to me (WHY do these things stay in your head?!?)

ITEM: A week from Tuesday, my son enters 8th grade. Different circumstances; he's in the "big grade on campus" at a middle school. Wait 'til next year.....

ITEM: 20 years ago tonight, the cast and crew of the first summer of the "Superstar Recording Studio" at Kings Dominion had a get-together at a friend's apartment before many of us left for college, etc. It was the beginning of my final week of life in Virginia before college. I was in a very serious relationship; job ending, brother getting married on Friday, leaving for Massachusetts on Sunday. Sounds like the "harmonic convergence". It was quite a week.

ITEM: 5 years ago last night, arguably, the final night for me of the vintage "Church Hill WRVA Radio". I worked until 12:30am to make sure commercials were ready for UVA broadcasts and other things, because I went on vacation the following week. When I returned, everything really started changing....


ITEM: The ultimate of ironies. I'm driving around this afternoon, going for my usual 4pm or so lunch, needing to find an air machine for a tire precariously close to "pancake-ing". First stop, "out of order". Second stop found, U-Turned and turned in.

75 cents later, I had air in my tire. Consider this: Air was ALL AROUND ME. Yet I had to pay money to get it in the one place I needed it the most....gotta be something prolific about that, but I'm too tired to figure it out.

By the way; the air machine said to deposit "three solid quarters". What the heck does that mean?? I thought, simply to be kind to the contents of the machine, that I should prefer to use three gaseous quarters.....alas, though, I didn't have any on me.

ITEM: Had my brother and I were forward-thinking....we'd be multi-millionaires today.

Fantasy football. It's everywhere. Guess what? We were playing it in 1983.

I saw a little blurb in Sports Illustrated in 1979, I believe, about a group of guys in Texas who had, essentially, the forerunner of fantasy football; calling it the "GFL" (I don't remember what it stands for).

We thought it looked cool to create teams and "play" them head-to-head using the players' real stats in the "fake" game. So, "POF" (Professional Offensive Football) was born.

The first coming last two seasons; 1983 and 1984. My brother won the first year. My chemistry teacher won the second season. Then, I headed to college, and POF went into hiding...until re-appearing in 1997.

This year, we have 16 teams, two different divisions in separate states, and the road to Paper Bowl IX begins September 8th.

Now the cynical side of me: YOU IDIOT!! COPYRIGHT THIS CRAP IN '83 AND YOU'D BE LIVING....well, I'd still be livin' here and driving my '88 Cougar, but at least I'd know my kids could attend college without having to pay for it 20 years after graduation. :)

Then, again, as part of the deal, we'd have to find the "GFL" guys and give them a cut; it's only fair. Boy, I bet they REALLY wish they'd cornered the market when they had it.

So, who's on your fantasy team?