​People live in their own worlds. This happens to a greater extent, it seems to me, as we get older.
 
My wife and I discuss this often: the syndrome of people not paying attention. While distraction happens to a different extent depending on the person you are dealing with, we both notice the level of a person not paying attention gets worse past the age of 60 or so.
 
We know multiple distracted people in our interactions, and we have a dog, Pepper, who falls into this category as well. We laugh about the dog, and we wonder about the people (What’s going through their heads that they walk away during the middle of a conversation? Are we that boring? Did we say something offensive? Do they have a negative attention span?).
 
We don’t have the answers to those questions because as a polite human being, you don’ t ask, “Hey, bub, why’d you just walk away as we were talking?” Instead, you watch that person stroll away and question yourself.
 
Perhaps this syndrome is the way of the world today. People are distracted. They don’t listen. It’s the norm. I don’t like to think that way because I like to think the best of people, so I stick with the theory that it’s only certain people who appear to be getting more and more light-headed.
 
When you meet someone like this and have an interaction, you can almost see the individual not listening. They look off into the distance. You get an “mmmmmm” from them in response to your question and they show a faraway look in their eyes.
 
Then, they mosey along, like our dog Pepper. This is amusing and ties into the theory of living in your personal little world.

Pepper is 17-years-old, cannot hear (maybe barely) nor do her eyes function more than probably five or ten percent. She operates by smells and routine. She sniffs away, knows where she is, and moseys along.

This seems the way of the world with distracted older people: they mosey along, dum deee dum dum dum. Perhaps this is a good thing. Without hearing or eyesight, just puttering through your day could be quite enjoyable. No one would bother you. You couldn’t hear questions. Your personal world could service you quite well.

In some ways, that could also make your life easier, by simplifying things. Because you can’t hear or see very well, activities become constrained. You boil them down to the basics – eat my breakfast, take a walk, drink coffee, do the laundry, not listen to people, cut the grass, have a cocktail, whatever is in the basic daily routine. You have quantifiable routine things to do that can give you pleasure.
 
You do things at your own pace. “I’ll get there when I get there.”
 
Many years back I remember an interview with an elder celebrity who was asked what he looked forward to each day. His answer (more or less): “Having a couple of cocktails on the veranda with my wife before dinner and discussing the day.”
 
He probably moseyed along a bit each day, in his own little world, content and contemplating.

​Fourteen is the new nine. This has nothing to do with all those catchy phrases about age 70 being the new age 50 or 50 being the new 35. No.
 
Sociologically, there seems to be a desire to show some number equates another. This has a lot to do with perception. The examples above pertain to age, and what we think someone should look, act and feel like at a certain age. If you’re feeling and acting younger at age 50 than people did decades ago, then you’re the new 35. You break perceptions.
 
Fourteen being the new nine though has nothing to do with age. It has to do with how maniacs drive on highways in the United States (and probably elsewhere in the world).
 
For many years, the “safe” speed to drive on our nation’s highways was nine MPH over the speed limit. For whatever reason, that was the known safety zone where law enforcement would choose to not pull you over even if they hit you with the speed gun. Going 79 MPH in a 70 MPH zone was good. Up that to 80 or 81 and you were fair game for the state police.
 
My older brother subscribed to that theory. He would talk about setting cruise control nine miles per hour over the speed limit on long interstate highway trips and feel no need to worry about getting pulled over, which as far as I know, he never did.
 
Today though, those limits seem to no longer hold. Drivers don’t stay in the 9 MPH over the speed limit range. They’ve raised the ante.
 
As an example, today I drove to our first game of the senior baseball league in the Milwaukee area. I’ve got to spend 30 of my 45-minute drive on the highway. Several times I drove 9 MPH over the speed limit. During those time periods, I was passed repeatedly.
 
In fact, I wasn’t just passed. Drivers smoked me.

This says something about our flouting of laws, the feeling that you can get away with it (arguably, even going one mile per hour over the limit is breaking the law, but weren’t not going there; it’s relative). More and more, it seems to me, people feel emboldened to get away with stuff. Thumbing your nose at speed limits is one of those.
 
As I watched car after car after car blast by me on the way to today’s game, I was struck by how it only takes one vehicle going for it. Others follow. They see the leader and they fall in behind, and fly.
 
Perhaps we have more and more stressed people today who are behind on their schedules and feel pressed to get someplace. Maybe people don’t budget their time as well, so they feel a need to speed more to catch up. It’s possible that more and more drivers just don’t care; they figure the police can only chase so many people, and figure it won’t be them.

I don’t know the motivations. There are more than mentioned above. What I do know is that 14 is the new nine for a gigantic segment of our society when it comes to putting your cruise control on during highway driving.
 
You might get away with it. Or not. Coming home from the game, a woman in an SUV flew past me as I was going six miles per hour over the speed limit. A police officer was on the side ramp, and turned on the lights to chase her down as I putt-putted away in my zone. Yeah, I broke the speed limit, too, but not as much, and somehow that made me feel righteous.

​For those of you who read this column with any degree of regularity, you recognize I’m no technology genius. So, it’s slightly amusing to me when someone else puts me in that category.
 
I have a good friend who calls me for advice occasionally on how to access something on the internet. This makes me feel smart even though I know how challenged I am relative to the experts on accessing data, figuring out where to go on web sites for the information you seek or establishing an electronic payment system to my account that actually functions.
 
Those examples above can frustrate me, no doubt about it. I can remember one time, for example, trying to get my banking information inputted to some app so one of my clients could pay me, and it took several hours and multiple new curse words to accomplish. I did it eventually, so there is something to that, but it doesn’t mean I know how to duplicate the process for something (or someone) else.

The flattering part about my friend calling me for help is that he believes I can duplicate it. In fact, he has a degree of faith in me that I don’t have in myself. I feel good when he calls, and I work hard to help him, and I think I do most of the time.
 
What his calls do for me is put me in a position of expertise I don’t have. It’s odd. You step back for a minute to consider his questions, wondering if you actually know something. When you realize you don’t, but you are capable of somewhat faking your way through the foggy information haze, you roll with it.
 
That means wading into the deep surf. I’ve got to break through the tension of the surface water to find the layers beneath and figure out how to share what I DO know with someone else.
 
And, one of the points of this, is all of us know something. If we know something, we can share it. Sharing knowledge with someone else also helps us learn.
 
These calls become teaching moments for me. I’m not talking about teaching my buddy. I’m talking about teaching myself. Running through the numbers with him, I find myself “getting” the online confusion he has and breaking down where I messed up. From there, I can give him sound advice.
Messing up is tremendously important. Never forget that. As I’ve gotten to the latter stages of my life, it comes up over and over in my mind how I’ve picked things up and really absorbed them into my brain’s operating system when I was lost and then found the solution.
 
Those are frustrating but rewarding situations. We learn in many ways. My friend trusts my instincts and knowledge and perhaps my ability to explain things which make sense to others. Ultimately, he learns differently that I do, but he trusts my system to help him.
 
Most of the time I can help my buddy when he calls. I’m a technology neanderthal, but he makes me feel like I’m a genius.
 
To give you a sense of perspective, he has yet to memorize the pin number for his bank account. Now that I’ve got down pat. And I can explain how to use a pin pad.

​Time for a story about friendship. Six women from our high school recently got together for a pilgrimage they take regularly to commune with each other for the umpteenth time (one of them could probably give me the exact number of these gatherings; we’re older, so let’s just say the number of times they’ve done this is a lot).
 
One the face of it, that might not sound unusual. Many of us stay in touch with high school friends, go to reunions, hang out, drive over to see someone to have coffee, dinner or a drink.
 
What stands out to me about this group of six (and sometimes more) is the commitment they have to each other and their respective friendships (as a group and one-to-one).
 
I’m not privy to their most intimate conversations. I’m confident though that they laugh, sometimes cry, support each other, do new things to enhance the collective lives. I know them well enough to understand that about them: their desire to be there for each other and enjoy hanging out.

Seems so simple, but elusive in today’s world. I wonder about the magic (can we call it that or is it something simpler like commitment and caring) that keeps all of them connected and supportive.
 
It’s a marvelous thing they have. You can see it in the photos they share, how they react to each other when you are fortunate enough to share time with them.
 
While touching base with one of the women recently, we discussed the rejuvenating aspect of getting together with long-term friends. We gain perspective. We see the world a little differently and return to our daily lives with a jolt of joy running through our veins.
 
As we passed text messages back and forth, I related a recent reconnection for me with a great friend from Marquette, MI.
 
When we visit, there is a spontaneous release of joy. We’re on the same page, up for an adventure, see a band, dig up dirt, drink beer, be goofy, climb a mountain, listen to his creative piano playing, walk along Lake Superior as 30 MPH winter winds rip through your jacket. It doesn’t matter what we do. What matters is the hang-out time, reliving a few good memories and creating some new ones.
 
I’ve found over the years that I return from these visits with an improved attitude. There’s a certain purification that goes on, a release of some bad sh…t that may be stored inside, replaced by good sh….t that gives me inspiration. That’s a huge reason for us to gather.
 
When my high school friend got settled this year in their retreat house, I wrote on her Facebook page that they should rent and watch “The Big Chill.” I’m sure they didn’t because they were having too much fun together.
 
But, “The Big Chill” says a lot about what it means to stay in touch. with  important people in your lives, sharing the bumps and bruises we encounter and celebrating those highlights we savor. Life would be so much less without this.
 
Those six women from our high school are, quite frankly, amazing to me. I tell them that when I see them. I think it’s unusual to see a group like that remaining so close and actively connected over oh-so-many years. If they could bottle that energy and sell it to others, all of them would be rich many times over. I think they already are rich in spirit, and they probably could care less about the money anyway.

When you leave the United States for more than a week, it offers a time of reflection, a chance to look back, contemplate and consider how and why we live the way we do. My wife and I recently returned from a lengthy trip to New Zealand. During those 15+ days abroad, I found myself reflecting on the way of life in New Zealand compared to the United States.
 
I came away with one overriding reflection: Kiwis (New Zealanders) put much more effort and care into protecting the native environment than we do in the U.S. I make that statement based on lengthy visual observations while being driven to natural habitat restoration sites in the southern half of the upper island and a lengthy circuitous route along the coast and Southern Alps (Kā Tiritiri o te Moana is the name of the mountain range in the Maori language, hence the shorter Engish version used for simplicity and understanding) of the southern island.
 
Why do I say this about care for the environment? In the days we were there, we found virtually no garbage anywhere along the roadways.

Simple statement. Doesn’t seem like much. But, take a second and think about it.

When you drive ANYWHERE in the U.S., when is the last time you have seen the side of the road you are driving/walking on pristine? And, I mean spotless. No plastic bags fluttering in trees. No abandoned beer cans. No cardboard boxes or cigarette butts. No plastic wrap or Styrofoam or tires or shattered glass. Just grass, trees, bushes, undergrowth, flowers, greenery, the way it is meant to be.
 
If you are like me, you cannot find a street anywhere near where you live that has not been turned into a dump. The only time you see those areas cleaned up, is BRIEFLY after Earth Day or after a Rotary Club or some other do-gooders get out for their one-day-a-year to clean up the mess that others have created 364 days a year.

How do the Kiwis do this? How have they developed this ethic of protection, caring and cleaniness? I asked around.

The answer is simple. They care.
 
I spoke to multiple individuals from the country while we were visiting. The answer was similar from person to person.
 
First, parents instill a reverence for the land. Don’t throw things out the window or onto the ground. If you see trash, pick it up, parents explain to their young children.

Second, the ethic is taught and reinforced in school. Lessons about respect for the environment and the importance of keeping it clean start early. When you instill that way of thinking, it becomes modus operandi as life moves on.
 
Finally, concrete steps like banning plastic bags at retail shops or charging a $1.50 fee per plastic bag discourage wasteful behavior. Plastic bags are not “offered” at checkout; you must ask for them, then pay the fee. Quite frankly, if we taxed plastic bags in the U.S., our Department of Treasury might become rich. Maybe we could eliminate the income tax. We can hope.
 
I do love the U.S. We have a naturally beautiful country, but it doesn’t stay that way when far too many people dump their refuse on the side of the road. Being in New Zealand got me reflecting on that and how much it angers me about our country. We can do so much better. And it would be so easy. Make it a mission.

​Sung to the tune, Dust in the Wind by Kansas: 
 
Same old song
Just a drop of salt on the snow-bound road
All we do
Salts the water, though we refuse to see
Salt in the wind
All we are is salt in the wind
 
Last week we got a minor dusting of snow. Temperatures the next day were forecast to rise in the snow melting range. Did that stop the salt trucks from pouring it on during the morning commute?  Nope.
 
They were out in force, laying out the road salt in chunks, parking lots getting salted and sidewalks crunchy under foot. All to get rid of that dang snow for about 3-4 hours.
 
Keeping our roads, sidewalks and parking lots safe during winter snowstorms is important. I get it. But there’s overdoing it with the salt thing. There has to be a better way that doesn’t impact the environment so treacherously.
 
When you live in Wisconsin, once the snow flies, you drive a car that’s encased in salt. As that washes off your vehicle, and mixes with the salt on the roads, the runoff goes where? Into the grass, siphoned into pools, ponds, streams, lakes and rivers. It increases water salinity, a silent negative for our waterways, greenery and animals.
 
I watch this over-salting and it really gets to me. Recently after an inch or two of snow, and the consequent massive salting disproportionate to the snowfall, the roads dried quickly in the sun the following day and started to create salt storms (similar to a dust, sand or dirt storm).
 
Driving down I-94 towards Milwaukee, you saw clouds rise from the interstate. A white banket billowed from the wind and speeding cars along the three lanes headed east as the salt broke into powder and blew along.
 
Though I have no proof, I found my eyes burning, and presumed it was salt in the wind. For several days, my eyes hurt, stinging, then it went away when rain washed the residual salt powder off the streets.
 
Isn’t there a better way to keep our roads safe and clear in the winter (and, quite frankly, reduce the rusting of our vehicles and the cracking of asphalt and pavement from salt infiltration)? With our entrepreneurial talent and know-how, I’m sure the engineers can come up with a reasonable solution the reduces our salt intake. Wouldn’t that be healthy? Sounds like a slogan.

Here are a few thoughts from this non-engineer. All you entrepreneurs can take it from there:
 

• Heated coils in the asphalt (I’ve seen this technology applied in sidewalks, but not roads, so I guess it’s too costly. Maybe you can figure out how to improve the technology and lower the cost.).
• Develop salt spreaders with minimal settings (only dropping light amounts rather than massive dumps). Alternately, have several settings based on the snow amount, type and how cold the temperature is so that only the most minimal necessary amount of salt is applied. Use AI to figure out the gauge.
• Invent a new snow melting mixture better for the environment, roads and vehicles.
• Build a blast furnace that trails the plow trucks to super heat the pavement so it burns off and evaporates all the moisture instantaneously.

I’m no engineer, so I freely acknowledge these are likely to be technically difficult. But hey, use this as your personal nudge. All you creative engineers unite and get this done. We’ll all benefit.

​Many years ago, when our dad was about my current age, there was a discussion around our house and Oprah Winfrey came up in that discussion. My dad said at the time, “Oprah who?”
 
Now, even back then, Oprah was a household word and had been for years. Famous to just about everyone except our dad. We were stunned when he showed a total lack of recognition, “Dad, where the heck have you been the last 10-15 years?”
 
Who knows? He wasn’t following popular culture.
 
Scarily, I can now relate to him. There are several examples that demonstrate how culture is passing me by.
 
One is the brouhaha over Bad Bunny playing at the Super Bowl. Let’s backtrack. Bad Bunny gets announced as the halftime musician. My response, “Who is Bad Bunny?”
 
Perhaps I have vaguely heard the name. Most likely, because he didn’t pertain to my life, I flushed that data. Not enough brain space to let him in.
 
All the hoopla followed with people taking sides on patriotism. I had no frame of reference. Since 2021, I have never heard of three of the Super Bowl halftime performers: BB, Weeknd and Usher.
 
Does the Super Bowl make them culturally  relevant? I’m not sure, but there are certainly a lot of testy people who think it’s the biggest deal on the planet when it’s not.
 
I don’t know any of those three bands. I don’t know their songs. I couldn’t sing along with the lyrics. Couldn’t imitate the guitar solos or drum rolls (if there were any). This doesn’t diminish their talents or elevate any of them to stardom. It just means popular culture is passing me by.

This happens to many people once you get past the age of 60 or so. You have other things to focus on, perhaps your health, a hobby or grandkids. You may still be working your butt off to pay the bills and not have time to focus on music or movies or sports to divert your anxieties.
 
I caught a bit of Green Day opening before the Super Bowl. I know them. I can sing (badly) some of their refrains. I like the beat. If they were given the halftime show, yeah, I would know them. But all that means is I know of a band from my limited cultural forum (mostly from my past; I don’t listen to much new music).
 
Your brain fills up with age. Perhaps that’s why we hark back to the music we know. It’s familiar. It provides good memories. We know the riffs and lyrics. We stick with the culture we know. It’s a familiar refrain.
 
And that, I believe, is what revved so many engines about BB on social media. One side doesn’t want new culture. The other side embraces it.

I like new culture. It invigorates our society, pushes us, forces us to examine assumptions and beliefs. That’s extremely healthy for an individual and for society at large.

Others want to stay mired in the past. I like my old music. When new music comes along that gets me singing the refrain and imitating the drum solos, tapping my knees, I buy in. Please let me know when you hear the next J. Geils Band enter the scene. I’ll be their biggest fan.
 
The Super Bowl is probably the single most over-hyped event in the United States. We turn it into a battleground. It’s not. It’s a professional football game. We should take that for what it’s worth: entertainment. Turn it on or turn it off. Your choice. Stop ranting and frothing at the mouth.

There’s a guy I talk to regularly at the fitness center where I work out. He turned 82 a while back. When I overheard this in conversation, I asked him, “How does it feel to be 82?”
 
Without missing a beat, he replied, “I don’t know, I’ve never been this old before.” I cracked up. I want to be that old guy.
 
I am the old guy, having just turned 70. I know some things I didn’t know before and lived through enough history the past 50 years or so (that sounds weird to say) to have learned a few things.
 
Because I’ve failed so many times, or had something go wrong, those events/situations have taught me what may work the next time or what should be avoided. For what it’s worth, here are some thoughts that stay with me and might help you at some point navigate life’s difficulties:

• Take care of your skin (and your feet and teeth).
• Stretch like a cat. Watch how they do it. Increase your stretching with age.
• Read (in-depth, not in short bursts)
• Make new friends. There are many good reasons for this. The saddest reason is losing an old friend.
• Hang out with younger people. They’re fun and get you out of your comfort zone.
• Challenge yourself somehow mentally, intellectually, physically, psychologically. I do this by refereeing basketball, continuing to play old codger baseball and setting golf goals that I never attain.
• Laugh. As much as possible. Hang out with people who make you laugh.
• Practice mental agility. There are more than enough options in today’s electronic world to find several games that force you to think. I play 3-4 every day.
• Travel within your personal financial parameters.
• Hang out with people you enjoy spending time with, and, conversely, avoid pound-offs (they take you down).
• Recognize online scams and stay away from them.
• Find a team you care about and root for them.

The list is not exhaustive. If I’m blessed to reach 80, this list will likely expand. There will be new challenges, new hurdles to leap over. I’ll share one amusing story before signing off that deals with prepping yourself to improve.
 
In this case, I was looking to strengthen my knees to handle the pounding of running the basketball court and baseball field, and squatting to line up putts on the golf green. I watched many people at the fitness center place an elevated mat in front of them, squat and jump up onto the mat and then hop down. Looks easy. It’s not at age 70.
 
Start small. That’s my first tip. I took a mat down last week that was six inches thick. So my leap had to get six inches into the air. A vertical jump. In my basketball playing hey day, I had a 38-inch vertical jump and could dunk two-handed. Now, I can barely slide a piece of paper under my feet when I rise.  This new exercise will hopefully help me build on that.
 
I did the first jump, then hopped down. I did it again, and my feet didn’t come up high enough and I lost balance and almost fell. I laughed at myself, “Hey old man, can’t even jump six inches anymore, eh?” I focused harder, then did five more successful reps for a total of six. That was enough. The next time I did 10 reps, all successful. This week I hope to raise it to 15. We’ll see.
 
Do the work, and you progress. Don’t expect miracles (probably another bullet that could be on the list above). If you keep after something though, you might surprise yourself.

​If you live in Wisconsin, you know January can be brutally cold. This year we had a run of almost seven weeks with temperatures not rising above freezing during the day, and several stretches of sub-zero temps combined with heavy winds for tortuously frigid days.
 
During one of those ultra-psychotically cold days (15-degrees below zero with 20 mph winds, for a -35 windchill), the heat in our house went out. We have a cast iron stove and several space heaters. We called our furnace guy, cranked the space heaters and fired up the stove.
 
Despite all those fingers in the dike, the temperature in our house continued to plummet from 63 degrees to 61 to 60. Our teeth weren’t chattering, but my wife and I wore extra layers, sweatshirts, stocking caps and pulling blankets over our legs while sitting.
 
Soon after we took those measures, the furnace came back on. It warmed up nicely. We called the furnace guy and cancelled the visit. As expected, the heat went out again soon afterwards and the house temperature began dropping dramatically again. We called to have the technician to come in again.
 
When you face this type of situation, you realize you’re close to the edge. You’re not about to die, but you think about how easily you could be in seriously dangerous circumstances. It’s about survival.
 
Your instincts kick in during times like this. You immediately consider consequences. “What’s the worst that can happen? What do I need to do next? What should we do about the pets?”
 
When modern technology fails, we’re back to those survival instincts. Think how lost you feel when you lose your internet connection. It may only last for an hour or two, but if you’re like me, you feel lost without connectivity.
 
Losing heat in the middle of an arctic wave is one of those occurrences that gets you back to your primal instincts. “Fire, heat, warmth, mmm, good. Give me animal hide to cover body,” says neanderthal man.
 
We are all close to living on the edge. You can lose a job that pays your mortgage with no savings to cover food, clothing, transportation, housing. If you have a life-threatening illness with no health insurance, what happens next? Your car can slide off a one-lane country road during a snowstorm with no hope for an emergency vehicle to rescue you.
 
We don’t think of these things on a day-to-day basis. We send them to deepest recesses of our brain to forget. If we worried about survival consistently, our heads would explode. We couldn’t function. More people around the globe grapple with survival every moment of every day than we can count. My small example of one day briefly losing our heat doesn’t measure up to their constant struggle.

While our heat was out that day, I took a hot shower. I could not believe HOW GREAT IT FELT. I let the water stream over me for far longer than I should have. My hands and feet warmed up; I was invigorated; it relaxed me and got my brain functioning again.
 
Most people around the world don’t have that luxury. Life is dangerous every day. We’re all close to living on the edge. Be thankful.

This past week, I officiated a boys basketball high school JV and freshman doubleheader here in the Milwaukee metro area. The freshman game was very sloppy. Lots of fouls. Kids were taking an extra step and we had to put a whistle on them to curtail traveling. Bad decisions abounded.
 
When that happens, as a basketball referee, it is hard. I’m not sure how much fans, coaches and players recognize this.
 
When you finish, your mind is worn out (to say nothing of your body). You’ve been making instantaneous tough decisions for over an hour – yes/no, let it go/blow the whistle, inbounds/out-of-bounds, contact that doesn’t affect speed/balance vs. contact that does affect speed/balance. In what other job must you be highly effectively (correct, consistent and judicious) in an intense emotional and physical environment? Not very many.
 
You cannot rest physically or mentally. You cannot rest in the game, nor can you expect someone to give you credit as you enter the next game because you must perform again.

You must be a lunch bucket guy. You must bring your lunch bucket EVERY day to EVERY game and perform. There are no days off.

I’ve use those statements often in describing what I do to others. When you enter a school, you start a new day, a new game, and what you did yesterday doesn’t matter. Your reputation doesn’t matter. You better bring your lunch bucket because you go to work again and must prove yourself.
 
At the freshman game noted above, there was a father in the stands who clearly appreciated how my partner and I officiated the contest. You might be surprised, but observant officials recognize these things. You see certain body language things that stand out. After the game, before the JV contest, he was down near the scorer’s table and he had a brief enjoyable interaction with me.
 
He immediately spoke in sincere appreciation (you know when it’s sincere) of the job my partner and I had done on the court. I thanked him and mentioned how tough the game was.
 
I said to him (more or less), “I’m not sure people understand how hard a game like this is to officiate. There are so many decisions to make on the court. The kids are sloppy. You have to let some contact go. You also must stay consistent. It doesn’t work well if you and your partner aren’t on the same page. Parents, coaches and players can complain and want a certain call to go there way, and you can’t blow your whistle all night. That would exhaust everyone.”
 
The point being that you are working hard every minute of that game being the lunch bucket guy, grinding it out, getting it done to the best of your ability. The next night you will do it again. And the next.
 
For the record, two other fathers that night came up to me and thanked me and spoke about how well-officiated the contest was, something my partner and I appreciated. There’s a lot written about the lack of support for sports officials, and there is no question there are nasty fans with unrealistic expectations, and coaches who act out rather than coaching their kids.
 
I’m not sure those fans or coaches understand the lunch bucket nature of what sports officials do. If they did, they might thank us a little more often. We’re not in it for the money or prestige.