Mike Pound

By Mike Pound
CNHI News Service

The Kansas-Kansas State basketball game ended about 15 hours ago, as I type this, and I’m still wondering when my hearing will return.

If there is a “bucket list” for college basketball, I’m thinking that watching the Kansas Jayhawks play the K-State Wildcats in Allen Fieldhouse on the KU campus would be at the top of the list, along with, I suppose, taking in a Duke-North Carolina game along Tobacco Road.

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I sometimes tend to have old-guy sensibilities, and one of my old-guy pet peeves is having to stand at sporting events. I figure if I have a ticket for a seat, I should be able to use that seat. But on Wednesday night, I made an exception. I made the exception partly because the game deserved standing attention and partly because if I didn’t stand, I wouldn’t get to see the game. So I stood and loved every minute of it.

With me at the game were my wife, our 12-year-old daughter, Emma, and my 18-year-old nephew, Owen, who is a freshman at KU.

It had been almost 30 years since I had been on the KU campus. Back when I had much more hair than I have now, I attended KU. I spent about a year and a half on the campus and about 30 minutes in class.

I attended several colleges and had fun at every one of them. I switched colleges a lot because I couldn’t find a college mascot that I liked. Well, that and the fact that I had to leave each college minutes before the campus police came to collect my parking fines or the library folks came after me for overdue book money.

The funny thing about my time at KU (besides my grades) is that I never once attended a KU basketball game when I was there.

In fact, Wednesday night’s game was the first KU game I have ever seen in person. But there also are a bunch of folks in Paris who have never been to the Eiffel Tower.

So there is that.

Until Wednesday night, Owen had never been to a KU basketball game either. I’m pretty sure he enjoyed it, but with Owen it’s hard to tell. Owen is such a good-natured kid, I’m pretty sure he would tell his dentist he was enjoying his root canal.

Owen is an English major. He plans, when he graduates, to starve to death. Ha. That’s an English major joke.

No, seriously, Owen is a freshman; he has no idea what he wants to do when he graduates. He does like to write, and he mentioned that writing scripts for video games sounds kind of interesting. I thought that sounded sort of odd at first, but then it made sense. I don’t know much about video games, but I do know that many of them have intricate story lines. I suppose Owen saying he is interested in writing scripts for video games isn’t any different from some kid in 1950 saying he was interested in writing scripts for television.

Owen’s older brother, Eric, is on track to finish college; well, no one is really sure when he’ll finish. Eric has sort of followed my lead when it comes to higher education. But Eric is also in a rock band that is doing very well in Lawrence and Kansas City. If you’re in the Kansas City area and have some time, check out the band Radio City.

I like spending time with both Eric and Owen. They take me back to a time when I was young and, future-wise, the sky was the limit. When I was going to KU, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. All I knew was that I wanted to do something I enjoyed and that didn’t require much heavy lifting.

That’s the thing about being young: The future is still the future. You know it’s there, but it’s not something you can put your hands on. It’s just out there.

For most of my adult life, I’ve managed to hang onto that part of my youth. Part of me still believes that the future is still the future. I think the minute you start thinking that you’re living your future is the minute you stop living.

That’s why I admire folks who, at seemingly advanced ages, chuck whatever it is that they’re doing and try something different. When folks do that, they prove that they believe that the future is still the future. They prove they are still living.

So, on Wednesday night I took in the KU-K-State game. Now I’m wondering if the St. Louis Cardinals could use a left-handed, middle-aged newspaper columnist out of the bullpen.

Mike Pound writes for The Joplin (Mo.) Globe. He can be reached at mpound@joplinglobe.com. CNHI News Service distributes his column.