A Tad

Yesterday I was reading the Sports Guy’s NBA Preview and in doing so, I was some how transported back to high school. I was on newspaper for three years in high school, go on and laugh, and one of my highlights occurred in 1995. That was the year I wrote a little NBA Preview of my own. When I say “little” I’m being sarcastic. Originally the plan was I’d write this Preview, and it would run in one issue of the Blue Valley Northwest Express.

Then I started writing it. And writing. Then I wrote a little more. Our paper came out once a month and when time came to lay out the paper, we found out that my preview wouldn’t fit in just one issue. A month later the editors realized it wasn’t going to fit in two issues. But we couldn’t run it in a third because, well the season would be nearly halfway over at that point. So everyone who remembers it only remembers how long the thing was. They ignore the fact that I correctly predicted a Knicks-Rockets Final. Unfortunately I missed two somewhat minor details. The Knicks would lose the series, and the entire series would be over shadowed by some white Bronco driving around Southern California one afternoon.

A couple years later I met a girl who was in the same sorority as one of the editors from high school. Some how this lunatic told my new friend that the reason they stopped running my preview was because I had plagiarized the thing. This is complete and utter bullshit. It’s true I had multiple NBA Preview magazines open while I wrote the piece, but that was for research purposes. I needed to know who was where exactly, and of course use lots of stats.

It bothered me for a while that I heard this three years AFTER the fact. So this bitter editor was either just trying to make me look bad to this girl, or she and the advisor lacked the guts to confront me. It’s true I butted heads with the editors and the advisor. In fact I was nearly kicked off staff. I had a slight problem where I would only follow up on the assignments I felt like writing. There were three subjects of interest to me. Those were sports, movies and music. I’ve really grown up a lot since then. Want me to write an NBA Preview? Sure thing. Asbestos story, I didn’t even attempt to write it. Hell, I didn’t even consider writing it. See, back in high school I had a few rules. I only cared about sports and movies, so that’s all I wanted to write about. Also, I would only interview people I knew. I was more then a tad bit socially retarded at that point in my life. Today I’m just a tad bit tard.