Hot dog! Some career training looks like just having fun

The year was — oh, hell. Never mind what year it was. The year was long, long ago.

I was a student at the University of Arizona in Tucson. A gorgeous spring day with classes done early and no work assignments that night opened a rare afternoon window of opportunity. I jumped right through it.

Grabbed the bus to my apartment, tossed two hot dogs in boiling water, popped open a cold Bud and turned on WGN for the Cubs game.

Hardly a bite had been bitten or sud sipped when the front door opened and my wife stood astonished in the doorway. Beer in hand, dog in mouth, Cubs on screen did not look good.

Relax, I told her. I’m training.

For what? A hot dog eating contest?

No dear. To become a sports writer.

That didn’t go down very well, which might be part of the reason the marriage didn’t end very well, either. But the point is, not long after that, I was writing sports for the Tucson afternoon paper. It was an opening into a newspaper career that has outlasted Cubs games on WGN.

There is a point to this yarn, even if it is a bit high and way outside. In this issue of The Business Journal of North Idaho, Nick Smoot makes a similar argument about playing video games. Yes, millionaires are being made not just creating video games, but playing the darn things.

Much more local business news and great yarns beckon inside, so grab a hot dog and a cold drink and dive in. Just make sure the door is locked.

— Mike Patrick, BJNI editor