News flash: I wear two-figure shirts for a six-figure income

Retired Cape physics teacher John Sarik sees and hears a world most people ignore. Lately, I’ve been seeing John at Cape boys games because he is a diehard basketball fan. Funny thing about Sarik, the science teacher, is he demanded absolute right answers arrived at by prescribed procedures.

He was unyielding and unbending, which really is what you want in the physics guy because airplanes fly or they don’t and spacecraft return to earth or they don’t.

No one needs a control room filled with haphazard approximations of immutable laws. Back in 1975, it was Sarik outside his classroom - now the ninth grade campus - not allowing anyone in the room because he heard something that piqued his alarm response. Everyone thought it was just quirky Sarik, being obsessively vigilant to sounds no one else could hear. And then the “dropped ceiling” came down in one piece. How ironic, two by fours and plaster crushing desks. The joke - dust to drywall dust -was not lost on me.

School was closed for days, as structural engineers suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome came in to certify the building as safe. That room needs to be dedicated and named for John Sarik. I guess Cape basketball is the perfect outlet for anyone understanding predictability.

THREE SECONDS - I was a 13-year-old basketball player when larger-than-life Polish referee Bob Potachni screamed at me.

“No, number 15, you can’t pitch a tent in there! White ball!” Three seconds is a rule to prevent big men from camping in front of the basket. That’s why it is so annoying when fans who can’t make a layup with a step ladder start screaming “three seconds” at the officials and the younger the players the more unreasonable the complaint. The lane is not a place to run out of, “Oh, I’ve been here for two seconds. Better vacate.” When the ball is loose there is no three seconds. High school officials who make more than a couple three-second calls in a close game usually require an escort to their car unless they are driving the team bus.

SASHA HUDSON - I first met this all-around athlete from Georgetown two years ago at a soccer skills competition. Two weeks ago I met him again riding a horse at a Southern Delaware Theraputic Horse show. Sasha knows sports, and his dream is to be a broadcaster. Last week he was an Athlete of the Week in the Cape Gazette. An editor changed all “he” pronouns to “she” and “him” to “her,” knowing Fredman needs to be double-checked. In this case, a mistake was made, as Sasha Hudson - like Los Angeles Lakers guard Sasha Vujacic of Slovenia - is most certainly a he. We will rerun Sasha this Friday as an Athlete of the Week so he can save both versions in his scrapbook.

SOCIALLY SKEWED UP - I walked into an advanced placement European history class a few years ago and couldn’t help but notice all Euro-Americans. I wondered if there was an advanced placement African history with all African-Americans. Of course there was not, and no one seemed to care, arguing, “Some things are just they way they is.”

I’m not the guy who goes around quota counting, but where are all the Afro-American girls in the equal-access YBA girls basketball league? I’ve asked that question, and gotten all kinds of answers, but I’m not asking the right people who are the families of the girls who aren’t there. What up?

HOW MUCH YOU MAKE? - Let me tell you this as a teacher/journalist sitting in an NFL press box: I am always one of the highest-paid professionals in the room. I wear two-figure shirts for a six-figure income. My students always thought I was cool but occasionally I would ask them what they thought I made in salary. When I told them, they groaned, figuring I was getting over on somebody. I know taxpayers, public information and all that stuff, but how much does a dump truck of dirt cost? How about government subsidies not to develop farm land? I wish I had some of that action. How about no sustained history of regular income overridden by chronic litigation syndrome? The moral high ground is heated by solar panels. And it can get hot, so keep heaving dirt bombs but a few are coming back! Twenty years ago in the window booth at Nicola Pizza a state trooper named Mike asked a college professor named Chuck, “How much do you make?” We all just laughed and grabbed for an inside cheesy piece on the party pizza.

SNIPPETS - Carrie Lingo, Olympian and captain of the women’s national field hockey team, will be Cape’s graduation speaker in June. A letter to the governor was sent to save the Little Big House. I want it saved, too, but I don’t think I can stand another referendum. Please take advantage of the new technology and vote Tuesday. Vote your heart! Vote your income! Vote some else’s income! But vote for kids! Go on now, git!