my careless contagion

I may not look like much of an athlete now, but once upon a time, I was. I was always involved in sports, up until I got pneumonia my junior year during basketball season. I never played another sport after that, as I hadn't recovered from pneumonia. I recall my mother blaming my sickness on me smoking marijuana (which I had never done) instead of actually mothering me in my sickness. If I had gone to a doctor earlier, perhaps the pneumonia wouldn't have progressed to the stage it did. But, as they say, it is what it is.   The photo above was taken during probably my last season of swim team, which ran during the summer. It looks like I'm doing the butterfly stroke, which is the most difficult. I recall being disqualified at least once for not doing it right. I was involved in swim team from the age of 10 until maybe 13, and those are not good years for a boy to be wearing a speedo. Pretty awkward. I stopped going to meets because I had a hard time getting rides. I rec...

The capital of Nebraska is Lincoln. Here is the capitol building in Lincoln. And neither capital or capitol is capitalized . How fun! English is only slightly infuriating. Lincoln, Nebraska. It's the state's capital. It's the home of Cornhusker sports teams. Nebraska has no professional sports teams, so the Cornhuskers are it. It's safe to say Nebraska is sports-obsessed. If you care about sports, it's a great place to live. To me, growing up a three-hour drive away, Lincoln was a great place to visit.  My dad was in the National Guards, starting in South Dakota (Hot Springs and Rapid City) and ending in Nebraska (Lincoln). National Guard duty entails a few weeks' commitment in the summer as well as every other weekend during the year. I often went with my father on the weekends and spent that time tooling around Lincoln, often by myself. It was more exciting than time spent in a town of about 4,000 (Broken Bow), needless to say. Sometimes too excitin...