While playing in only two games last season because of a back injury, Illinois State offensive lineman Gabe Megginson had plenty of newfound free time.

On gamedays, he often sensed he was out of place on the sidelines.

“I felt so lazy,” he joked. “I’m just sitting there watching everybody, in sweats, drinking coffee.”

Away from the stadium, he filled his time with a new musical venture – the harmonica.

He practiced for hours during the season and even mastered a Stevie Wonder song.

“I know the solo from ‘Isn’t She Lovely,’” he boasted. “So, I’ve got that.”

The road ahead

Despite the cancellation of spring football across the country because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Megginson is facing the 2020 season on a happier note after surgery last fall.

“I feel pretty good,” he said. “I’m pretty much doing everything. I’m still limited on running, and I probably won’t squat (in the weight room). I think that’s a good idea.”

Gabe Megginson

Megginson, a fifth-year senior last season who transferred from the University of Illinois before the 2018 campaign, said he never imagined being part of the Redbird program for yet another season because of his back.

“In the preseason, it started hurting and I remember thinking, ‘I’ll never do six years of college,’” said Megginson, who started 11 games at left guard in 2018. “As soon as it happened again, I thought, ‘Who do I call to get a sixth year?’”

Megginson, who said he will petition the NCAA this spring for a sixth season, was even more encouraged to come back after watching his teammates make a run to the FCS quarterfinals.

“That was the best team I’ve ever played on,” he said. “That was fun to watch. I was a little upset I couldn’t be out there. (The offense) had their struggles, but they always found a way to get it done. It was awesome to see.”

How it began

A “shooting” pain in his left foot nagged at him during spring ball in 2019, months before the season, but it went away for the summer.

“I just kind of ignored it,” Megginson said.

When fall camp started, it came roaring back.

“It was tough getting into a stance,” Megginson said. “My left leg would tingle all the way down. I just sweated. It was bad. A lot of sweat. It was so uncomfortable.”

Megginson said he finally couldn’t avoid the training room and decided to have it examined.

What was discovered was an injury to the L5 S1 area of the low back.

Megginson said he travelled to the East Coast to have surgery performed by specialists at New Jersey-based Trinitas Health.

“They were great people, and it was awesome care,” he said. “I walked that day (after surgery) and it was already better that day – a big relief.”

Missing Megginson

His absence from the lineup led to Illinois State trying multiple starting lineup combinations during the season.

“He was one of our best linemen,” Redbirds head coach Brock Spack said. “He’s a physical, athletic body. To not have him all year, it took us a while to figure out what we were going to do.”

Spack said when Megginson returns, he will again fill one of the team’s guard spots.

Losing Megginson also made the team laugh a little less, according to Spack.

“It took a little of our personality,” he said. “He’s a little quirky, in a fun way.”

Spack stressed that the program will remain cautious as the calendar turns toward the fall.

“We have to be careful with him so we can get him to gameday,” he said.

Trump’s team may be working together

On the parts of achieving our goal.

But success is elusive unless

There is one who sees clearly the whole.

Like most of the world, we are shuttered in trying to avoid the COVID-19 virus.  I don’t have any unique hot takes or thinky-thoughts that anyone else hasn’t already shared.  I just want to write something for future alien anthropologists that explore our post-apocalyptic planet to consume.

Although I started trying to write this weeks ago, we are now at week three of staying at home.  I work from home 100% so that is not a huge transition for me.  But having my wife and kids home 24/7 are.  I very used to having alone time.  I also used breaks between meetings and work to get some minor things done around the house.  Other than laundry that isn’t happening at the moment.   My kids are going stir crazy having watched all the screen content they can.  The biggest challenge has been trying to stay in some sort of routine.  I try to get the kids dressed every day and if the weather is nice, we can at least play in the backyard.

We self-isolated a bit early.  We kept Moose and Squirrel home from what would be the last day of school (March 16).  We didn’t let our daughter go to Martial Arts classes, even though she was training for a trophy.    We canceled the cleaning lady although we have offered to pay her for that first Saturday.  My wife has gone out for grocery shopping only twice since Social Distancing, and once since Sheltering in Place.  Fortunately, we were relatively stocked up before this all occurred.

When this first began, I was surprised to find I had friends on both ends of the political spectrum who were talking it very seriously and also not taking it seriously enough.  In the beginning, it felt to me like the Y2K scare.  We had to use worse case scenarios to get people to take this seriously enough and change their behaviors.   That’s not to say I didn’t take precautions.  I washed my hands, avoided touching my face (I’m an outlier in that I don’t touch my face as often as everyone else claims they do).   But I didn’t quite understand the need to avoid people as much as possible, at first.

Unlike my wife, I don’t work in the healthcare field so like many ordinary people I don’t realize just how easily disease can spread.

• Some do not get it at all.
• Some are asymptomatic and aren’t affected but can infect others.
• Some get it and it doesn’t kill them but it sucks.
• Some get it and die.

No one in your Facebook feed is an epidemiologist.  We’ve gone from Social Distancing to Sheltering in Place. If this keeps up, the next step is stasis chambers.

Why did they hoard toilet paper

I think the “logic” behind stocking up on toilet paper is that Preppers and Apocalypse COSplayers and others in the know, know that Step 7 of an impending doom says to hoard toilet paper. But by the time you are near Step 7, it is too late to hoard TP. (also, we should be using Bidets but that is another subject).

Stay tuned.

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When it comes to missing people these days, I had about a year’s head start. “All of this,” closings, stay-at-home orders and all, began just after the first anniversary of my father’s death. The political moves and the logical and scientific announcements (accurate or not) often leave me thinking I want to talk to him about the whole thing.

But I think of him often in another way. When I’m thinking of going out for supplies, choosing something to read, or trying to make myself a mask, one of Dad’s more familiar questions comes to my mind’s ear: “What can you do with what you already have?”

This creative encouragement was often part of a request for him to fix something or take me and my sister somewhere to get something.

Of course, sometimes he would fix things or transport us. The collection in the featured photo here wouldn’t fill my curio cabinet so heavily if he hadn’t fixed many of the animal figures in it. (Sorry about the blur in the photo — I guess they moved.)

Once, one of my model horses had a broken tail. Dad couldn’t get the glue to hold it on, but he came up with a support — he put a pipe cleaner in the tail, added more glue to it, and made the repairs.

Much later, as a “grownup,” I had a small table/filing cabinet that was fit together with knobs on one piece that fit into holes on the two pieces perpendicular to it. I didn’t know that until the knobs dried at a different rate from the main pieces and became too small for the holes. The cabinet fell apart. When I explained the problem to Dad, he promised to take a look at it.

I was ready to scrap the whole thing, but I got many more years out of it thanks to Dad — and I also got a review of “What can you do with what you already have?” He took one look and asked whether I had glue and blank paper. (Of course I had.) When I brought the glue and paper to him, he started folding the paper into small strips about the height of each peg.

As he worked, he told me the familiar story of being “on board ship” — on the El Salvador Victory in the Pacific during World War II — in more detail than he had before.

“There were no hardware stores in the middle of the Pacific,” he said. I’d heard that expression before, too. But as a grownup, I got more detail: When something went wrong, the order would go out on the P.A. — “Don’t throw anything overboard!” They never knew what among the “garbage” they might need to mend something on the ship. That, I recognized, was the origin of “What can you do with what you already have?”

The strips of paper, moistened with glue, got wound around each peg to increase them in size. (I suppose I helped, but Dad did much of the mending, as usual. I think he enjoyed still being asked.) Then we held the pieces together and pushed the wrapped pegs into the holes. Most fit perfectly. I think one needed another strip of gluey paper.

I’m thinking of that cabinet and hearing Dad’s question a lot these days. I’m not going to buy a mask — I’m going to make some out of the bandannas I have used over the years to polish my cello.

Sometimes I want something different to eat than the limited things on my shelves, but hearing grocery stores called “the front lines” keeps me home. Hearing a combination of Dad’s question and Mom’s kitchen encouragements, once last week I improved on the macaroni and cheese I’d made for lunch. I had some left over, so I added chili to it for supper. The result, chili and cheese and macaroni, neither tasted nor felt like leftovers.

So what can I do with what I already have? Write about it, naturally.

Margaret Serious has a page on Facebook.

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