Bits & Pieces

By Kim J. Harmon

One time – just one time – I would like to see a professional athlete suck it up when all of his posturing and bravado comes back to slap him in the face.

Gilbert Arenas of the Washington Wizards – the best player in the NBA not named Kobe or LeBron – made some big statements when he said he would drop 50 points on Portland to pay coach Nate McMillan back for his part in cutting Arenas from the U.S. national team.

Well, Arenas had a shot last weekend against the Trailblazers and came up a little shy – about 41 points shy – and then offered up a pretty lame excuse about the Wizards focusing on defense instead of offense in the game.

Jeez.

Would it be so hard to laugh it off and say, “Hey – I didn’t follow through. I dropped the ball. Maybe next time I should keep my big mouth shut.”

Another example of a professional athlete refusing to take personal responsibility and, instead, offering up excuses and blaming someone else (in this case, Wizards coach Eddie Jordan, for “focusing on defense” against Portland).

It never ends.

I certainly don’t blame the Masuk High School swim team from pulling out of its South-West Conference battle with Newtown at the last minute on Tuesday.

After all, we were led to believe that the snow storm bearing down on Connecticut was going to start shortly after dusk and that between eight and 14 inches would be dumped on us before all was said and done. I know I wouldn’t want to drive back to Monroe in a snowstorm.

So, what happened?

What pretty much happens every time the news and weathermen sufficiently stoke our nervousness up to a full boil.

Nothing.

I was on my way home from Fairfield on Tuesday, a little after nine (after watching a great girls’ basketball game) and there wasn’t a hint of snow.

And I woke up on Wednesday, imagining a white out (but expecting nothing) and was greeting with about an inch of snow currently being damped down by some freezing rain.

Where did all the snow go?

When are we going to learn that the weathermen (despite their Dopplers and whatnot that can tell, from Hartford, whether or not it’s raining in my driveway) are simply giving us their best guess?

I mean, my brothers and I have gone golfing under an 80% chance of rain and have come back dry. Of course, a weatherman would simply point out, “Well – I said there was a 20% chance it wouldn’t rain.”

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Can you imagine getting 12 feet of snow dumped on you in about a week? I mean, I was ticked off last week when I had to shovel three inches off my driveway. Twelve feet? God, I’d be shoveling 24 hours a day for seven straight days before – hopefully – being felled by frostbite or a heart attack or being run down by a plow.

A state of emergency was declared for upstate New York, and rightfully so, but after reporters descended on Oswego one convenience store owner finally declared, “We get a lot of snow up here – what’s the big deal?”

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I know I have said this before, but the seven best words in the English language are “March Madness,” “Opening Day” and “Pitchers and Catchers.”

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It is sad enough that the world spends so much of its brain power wondering what Anna Nicole Smith was up to lo these many years, now her somewhat suspicious passing – and all the money hanging in the balance – guarantees us we will be inundated with conspiracy theories from now until the end of time.

My, what a society we live in.

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I never fail to be amused by the crazy moves some drivers are willing to perform on the highway just to get a little closer to wherever it is they are heading. Just last week I watched, in my rearview mirror, as a driver weaved in and out of each lane on I-84, cutting off two people before coming up on my right side and even though I tried to block him off he squeezed through a narrow gap between me and the fellow in front of me.

About six miles later, he was still in front of me.

All that work and risk … for what?

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I know we are not as vexed about gasoline prices as we were this past summer, but I still can’t help getting irked just a little bit whenever I see one of these monstrous Chevy Suburbans or Ford Expeditions on the road and just one person inside.