Paul Marchant

As I was sitting at the end of the bench in my role as assistant junior varsity girls’ basketball coach during a game, I felt my phone buzz in my shirt pocket, alerting me of an incoming text. In my attempt to maintain proper decorum, I ignored it until halftime, when I snuck a peek as I walked to the locker room.

With the advent of the new year, it’s nothing new to see and hear, ad nauseam, about how seemingly everyone is ridding themselves of old bad habits, turning over new leaves, starting fresh and generally being inspired to rise above their lesser selves to become something better than they were in the past 12 months.

I grew up in a rural area. There were six little towns in the south end of the county. The kids who lived in those six towns all attended the same schools. Kindergarten through sixth grade attended the elementary school, and seventh through 12 grade attended the high school.

There are a lot of things I love about fall. I could go all cliché on you and talk about the changing of the seasons, the chill in the air and the beautiful colors of the fall foliage. And, to be honest, those things all play a role in how I feel about the season.

I hold some allegiances to various creeds, ideologies, people and sports teams. The strength of my allegiance varies according to the cause. I know plenty of guys who live or die by the color of their tractors and their cows or the letters on the tailgate of their pickups.

Given my weak resistance to any sort of peer pressure, it truly is a wonder that I haven’t ended up as a strung-out junkie spending his days in and out of county jail.