By MONTE DUTTON

Presbyterian College is going to be playing basketball in a little while. I vowed, having experienced what happens when one insists on writing about ballgames when one is sick, I was not going out to ballgames again until this shingles has run its course.

Yet every day I think about it until the time comes where I just say, “Hell with it.” Then I watch Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller in Pygmalion.

This isn’t as bad as the first time I had shingles. Over a week after I first concluded something was amiss, my headache is mild, but I’m not accustomed to around-the-clock headaches. The facial rash has mostly disappeared, but the hardened matter that cakes the inside of my right nostril could hold concrete blocks together. Most people take showers in pursuit of general cleanliness. My chief goal is blasting my nose.

I used up my daily energy riding around paying bills and going grocery shopping. I’ll be following the Blue Hose – and, this evening, the Paladins — through the magic of wifi.

It’s been a bad week. Two men I knew died. Mojo Nixon was a year older than I. Bryce Stanfield was 21.

I’ve been taking a course for about 10 days informally titled “Learning Just How Unimportant I Am.” I realized that if I died, no one would know until someone came to cut off the power.

Mojo would’ve gone to the ballgames were he so inclined. He had given a concert on a cruise ship, went back to take a nap and died.

Last night it took forever to put together a roundup of what was going on in the county. Innumerable teachers once told me I had to “apply myself.” Nowadays, if I applied myself anymore, my name would be Absorbine Jr.

I saw a lady wearing a tee shirt the other day that read:

ALWAYS HIRING

ALWAYS FIRING

I thought, well, that would make a good song for George Jones. He’s dead, too.

My personal poet laureate, the late Tom T. Hall, wrote a song about a man who “came home one afternoon and never opened up his eyes.” I had a high-school teammate who died after playing a pickup basketball game somewhere in Mauldin. It was this month, 34 years ago. Back then, my knees still allowed jogging. My pickup basketball games stopped, though, shortly thereafter.

Bryce was working out with teammates to get ready for Furman spring practice.

I’ve reached the point in life where I realize in full how utterly unimportant I have become. One reason is, if I say it, the expression on the faces of those around me indicates, Yeah. Pretty much.

It’s another Super Bowl. I’ve watched them all on TV. I don’t remember them all, and what I remember is more a result of where I was and what I was doing.

When Joe Namath led the Jets past the Colts, it was the first time I ever cried over a sporting event. I was childish because I was a child.

When I was in college, I went to Super Bowl parties. The Raiders destroyed the Redskins, which became obvious when Joe Theismann threw a stupid interception that was returned for a touchdown at the end of the first half. I grabbed a fellow Washington fan and said, “Let’s go. We got nothing to lose.” I have little memory of whatever it was that happened next.

I developed an aversion to gambling at a party the year the Redskins clobbered the Broncos. The friends who threw the party were big gamblers. I think they bet 50 bucks on the coin flip. They bet big on the Broncos, who took an early 10-0 lead. Then the Skins scored 35 straight points.

It was 35-10 at halftime. The over-under was 46. Having already lost their shirts on the Broncos, they turned into huge Redskins fans. Always classy Joe Gibbs started running the ball. The third quarter was scoreless. Late in the game, Timmy Smith finally scored a TD. When he landed in the end zone, my friends erupted in wild celebration because, while they’d lost big, they made a little of it back.

They were singing “Hail to the Redskins!” Watching all this from a safe distance, with a few beers in me, I realized that a man with money on the game would root for his brother to break his leg.

Money corrupts. It cheapens the sports experience, or at least it does mine.

The coldest Super Bowl I remember was when I attended a party in Greenville on one of that city’s colder days. The ice was solid on Roger Berry’s driveway. The 49ers demolished the Dolphins.

During the NASCAR years, I usually watched the game alone in an Ormond Beach condo. One year some friends and I watched the Bears beat the Colts at a TGI Friday’s.

Another year the Patriots played the Eagles in Jacksonville, and the night before, I was watching buddies play music in Saint Augustine Beach. When I walked in, it seemed as if everyone in the bar was either my best friend or wanted to fight.

I was wearing a Red Sox cap because at that time in my life, I wore a Red Sox cap a large percentage of the time. I’m a Boston fan in baseball only. My old man raised me that way. Most Boston fans root for the Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics and Bruins, if not BC, BU, Hahvuhd and the Boston Pops orchestra.

“Hey, asshole, we’re gonna kick your ass!”

“Hey, come ovuh heah! Wanna beah?”

Don’t mind if I do.

Then I became a novelty item. It’s not often Beantowners find Sahx fans from anywhere else.

“Hey, Johnny Reb, you’re awright, you know that? Wanna beah?”

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