Just My Opinion - By Mary Kilen
The Football Pick Season Is On
Like a good number of people in Stanley, we at the office play the football picks organized at Bravera Bank each week.
The first week was, for lack of a better phrase, like throwing spitballs at the wall. It’s hard to guess how a team will be those first few weeks because you don’t see any of the starters on the field during the preseason. You’re not sure how the trade of players will affect a team.
Imagine my surprise when I went 10-4 last week. In fact, we all did better than half right last week.
That might have been an anomaly for me, I fear. I sat this last week and made my picks. I admit that some of my picks are made with my heart and not my head. That sometimes leads to some wrong guesses, but there are teams I just struggle to pick to win and others that I want to win so badly that I will pick them.
Week two had a couple of those games, but I put some real thought into my picks. Then came the games and it was like the football gods just laughed at me. I think I’m at 6-8 before the Monday night game.
It will be back to the drawing board before I pick for next week. I’m not sure what I will base my picks on. Maybe I should check in with Abel before making my picks this week. That little guy has a head for football. Ask him about just about any team or player and he’ll give you more information than you can imagine possible coming out of that little almost eight-year-old.
Last week, Amanda and I were texting about her draft for a fantasy football league. She was all kinds of nervous, but we joked that Abel was her ace in the hole. He made a good share of her draft selections for her and I’m sure he’s helping her decide which players to put in her line up each week.
On Sunday afternoon she texted me that she was matched up against Zach this week and was kicking his butt. He was quick to point out that the day wasn’t over yet and he had plenty of players in the late games, so she was taking her lead with a grain of salt.
The pick process is all in fun for us at the office. There may be some good natured teasing about who did or didn’t do very well. We’ve even been pleasantly surprised a couple of times when against all odds one of us has managed to have the best results for a week and won a prize for our efforts.
I really like that the staff at Bravera has allowed so many of us to join in the fun each year. One thing for sure, playing this version of picks has proved to me that I should never put money on a game at a sports book!
Where Did Civility Go?
A friend of mine posted this on Facebook: “Don’t let politics ruin relationships. One of the truest tests of maturity is the ability to disagree with someone while remaining respectful.”
In my head I said, “Amen sister!” and then I started reading some of the comments that followed on the post.
A post about civility denigrated into posts that proved the point. These were friends that were commenting about how they would like to, but they just couldn’t because the other side was …. insert your choice of adjective here.
I long for the days when you could have a civil discourse about anything without the fear of what the response might be. That is never more true than the state of politics right now.
I remember when you could have a conversation about a candidate or an issue and be on different sides of the issue. You could agree to disagree and move on. You could have a conversation about the differences without it becoming increasingly hostile.
Now, you watch the way people treat each other from the “safety” of their keyboard on social media. I cannot imagine people actually saying these things face to face, but then again it is a different world we live in now than it was.
With just under two months until general election day, our lives will be inundated with advertisements and stories about candidates and issues. The same is true with the measures that will appear on ballots this election in North Dakota.
I pray that we can all try to be civil to each other as we move forward. There’s enough hate and anger in the world. There’s no way we should be treating the people closest to us with anything less than respect. Maybe the old adage our parents used to say should be applied again. If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all. You don’t have to agree with someone to still treat them with basic human dignity and respect.