Mike Nemsky’s mind started its nightly routine, as he was lying still on the right side of his bed with Buster curled at his feet, scratching like the aged dog he was. His first thought, as he relaxed his sore back, was the Super Bowl, which would be held in another four weeks after the playoffs and again, like the previous four years, his team, Buffalo, would not be a part of this annual January American football spectacular. Suddenly, the noise of fireworks disturbed his thoughts. He listened hard and knew the noise came from the street below as it seemed some of the downtown neighbors found a need to celebrate the arrival of 2002. Mike, being a technical genius of sorts and very analytical, could never figure out why they would call it New Year’s Eve 2002 in some venues and 2001 in others. This was just another one of those crazy brain farts Mike would analyze intensely for a few moments, and then once his mind got tired of thinking about it, he would simply discard the thought.

Finally, after twenty minutes or so, he fell asleep. The last thing that flashed through his mind was a phone call from his daughter at 12:15 AM, which he got each and every year. Jennifer always called from wherever she happened to be on New Year’s Eve. She would cry like a baby, then in an intoxicated state send her love and finally say her heart felt goodbyes.

Mike never remarried after his divorce ten years ago. This was most likely because he couldn’t find what he was looking for, or simply that he didn’t want the anguish or the pain that went along with those life-long relationships. Confidence and isolation were the factors that Mike possessed when it came to office work and computer-related things, but not with relationships. He knew he was a loner, but he sloughed it off as being shy. For the time being, he was content with that.

He opened his eyes; the black General Electric clock read 7:18 AM. He got up, slipped into his blue track pants and his oversized white long-sleeved shirt, and sat in his easy chair just like he had every morning for the past three weeks. He looked at the end table next to his big, black Franklin recliner, which was his most-prized possession. There it sat: motionless, pink, physically harmless, but so powerful in its content. It was Mike’s pink slip from his employer, Digital International Technology, or DIT, as it was usually referred to. It was dated December 7, 2001, and the damn thing was signed by some dude whom Mike had never met during his twelve years at the technology giant in Orchard Park, New York, a suburb just outside Buffalo and home to the world-famous Buffalo professional football team. The Buffalo Bulls were Mike’s favorite team in both the good years, which were few, and the bad ones, which seemed to occur more frequently and prevail longer.

Mike thought that he had enough cash in the bank to survive almost a year if he could cut back on certain essentials, and only if he refrained from buying anything new. His mission in life, at this point, was clear. He should either find another job or win the lottery. It seemed to be that simple. He didn’t mind being by himself because he enjoyed the solitude and tranquility of living in a one-bedroom apartment on Elm Street, close to downtown Buffalo. The rent was a little higher than average, but it had its good points. He was close to anything his heart desired, including the mass-transit train and the lake, which was the best feature, and for this he was extremely proud.

Mike loved the water, the boats, and the yachts. He also liked the people, who were all dressed in their white pants, shirts, dresses, and bathing suits.

Mike’s dream was to own one of those boats, move to Florida and live off the coast of Miami Beach. He had pictures of sailboats perfectly displayed in his bedroom. Sometimes, he would sit in the big, red swivel chair that his parents had given him, spin like a top and look at the pictures. But now, with his job gone, his dream would be on hold again, just like many times before—especially when Jennifer had to get braces and when she went to the University of New York. Mike had to fork over thousands of dollars to his ex-wife for Jennifer

Joining the boating elite was his dream, and his mind returned to that thought often. No one or nothing could remove this dream except death, but Mike rarely thought about dying. Even though he had just turned forty-six and for an average-looking guy was in good health, he hated the fact that he was twenty pounds overweight. He looked younger than forty-six, and had been told so by several people, but he also knew that with his self-induced cutbacks that were obviously going to happen soon, those twenty pounds would disappear at least for a while.

The weather outside the third-floor small-apartment window was frightful at best. The snow had piled to almost eight feet, and the temperature was minus fifteen degrees with the wind chill. Mike didn’t really care for the cold weather, but he had managed it for seemed to be his whole life. It had a certain way of making a person humble. Mike enjoyed the changing seasons of the weather. Besides, if he needed a warm-temperature fix, he could always go to Miami. He had done this in past years, especially when the Bulls played the Dolphins. He would stay the week, party his rear off, attend the game and return to Buffalo.

The New Year’s Day parade was coming on TV soon, which would be followed by the college football game. Mike liked to watch the college football games because they were so unpredictable and not as controlled as the professional-league games. He counted in his head and knew that he had four days until the Miami Dolphins came to Orchard Park to play the Bulls for the season finale. Mike despised the fact that Miami had managed to squeak into the play•offs and that his team, the Bulls, had won only three games this season. Mike knew that it was a rebuilding year. The young talent on the Bulls’ team would be a lot better next year, but as far as Mike was concerned, those same words were spoken at the end of each and every losing season. Mike really enjoyed those five years that Kelly quarterbacked the team and helped them into four straight Super Bowls. He didn’t enjoy that the teams that were no better physically had somehow managed to find a way to beat the powerful Bulls team. Mike was puzzled on this point, and it took him almost three years to get over those losses. It was New Year’s Day, and Mike had to decide what he was going to have for dinner. He decided to take out a small ham, which he had bought several weeks ago, and he laid it on the counter so it could defrost. Mike really was an avid coffee drinker, but he also liked vodka and ice tea. This was another luxury that he would have to drop as soon as things got tighter.

Mike’s personality would never allow him to make a move or execute a plan until he had researched all the facts, read all the articles, and simulated the numbers. Then, he would make a decision. His ex-wife hated that character trait about him. He was never spontaneous or carefree in his way of life, and the two of them clashed heads numerous times until the marriage soured and Mike left for his new life in Buffalo. His ex-wife moved away to New York City after she met a stockbroker, fell in love, and wanted to start her life over again somewhere else. For Mike, this was fine.

The sun was shining through the dirty window, and if the heat would return to the apartment, it was almost like summer outside. But Mike knew better. He would have to wait it out, at least for the next three months. He spent some time each day reading the classifieds for job opportunities. He was sure the number of opportunities would be small. For a middle-aged man trying to retool his job prospects, the outlook was even bleaker.

He poured a shot of vodka into a plastic cup and topped it with peach ice-tea mix from Crystal Light, followed by three ice cubes— always three ice cubes. Mike thought about his obsessive behavior and realized that he was in fact getting more control on some of the quirks that not only bothered him but also seemed to bother everyone else in his life, including his ex-wife. When did this obsession about three ice cubes start? He had no answer.

Mike had been anal and obsessive most of his life. He knew that these problems had caused his ex-wife to leave him. She considered his quirks comical and entertaining at first, but after several years, she viewed them as obsessive or even bordering on compulsive. He knew the real reason his ex-wife left; her rapidly growing desires outweighed his income. Mike smirked and sat back down in the recliner and sipped his drink while surfing the 110 stations that his cable-TV provider allowed him.

One drink turned into four, and by 9 AM he had a buzz starting. It felt good. He was a quiet drunk. He would usually fall asleep before getting rowdy or loud. Mike went back into his bedroom and slipped on a pair of wooly socks.
“The floor is as cold as hell,” Mike thought, but he decided to keep the heat down—another way of conserving energy and costs.
“Bull crap,” he said to himself.
He knew in fact that he simply didn’t want to pay the expensive electric bills that followed those cold days and nights. He muttered to himself, put on another pair of socks, another sweater, and a blanket. Those were the answers he was used to, and he liked it that way. Mike’s apartment was neat and tidy, and sprouted only an occasional dust bunny in the corners of the wooden-slat floors. He didn’t like clutter and took an above-average stance against it, especially in his personal life.

Mike really didn’t know any people whom he would call close personal friends. He did, however, have a few workmates whom he had spent lunches with, and the very rare evening out for drinks, usually for a birthday or an anniversary with DIT.

He remembered his tenth anniversary at DIT and the party they had for him on First Street, at that seedy dive, which had great beef-on-kummelweck rolls. He also remembered getting quite drunk that night and making an exit that nobody even knew about.

He did know Morris, who lived next door to him on the third floor. Morris was a small, fat man who left each day for work and returned late in the evening. Mike didn’t know what this guy did for a living, and he really didn’t care. Those neighbor-type relationships would always bring hardship to friendship because of money, wives, girlfriends, possessions, and even life-styles. Mike knew this and avoided it; besides, he was happy being a loner, and he didn’t need other people around him to make his life happier. It just didn’t matter to him. He now had his new computer, which provided for the perfect relationship.

It was a Dell Pentium 4 processor with all the bells and whistles, which he had purchased for himself for Christmas. He ultimately spent three days transferring all his software and data files using a newly acquired Zip-drive unit. Finally, he had the latest, the fastest, and the smoothest computer system in the world sitting on his dining-room table, sprawling several wires everywhere. Mike thought about what it would take to remove the wires or possibly make one wire that would reduce the clutter seen behind each computer setup. PC Magazine, to his knowledge, had never shown an article about wireless systems or a single-wire system.

He favored the wireless approach because he knew it was the future. He had also worked in the wireless field for almost his entire adult life with DIT and a couple of other companies that he didn’t like to think about because they only brought back bad memories. Mike knew that DIT and the other companies he had worked for used his highly analytical, obsessive brain only for their growth, not his. Mike had invented several things over the years, and as expected, he would just hand them over to whomever he was employed by at that time. Next, he would be let go or fired, and given the reason of downsizing. The company would produce the idea itself or sell the idea to another company.

Mike had invented the little legs on the keyboards that would tilt the damn things up and ultimately prevent carpal tunnel syndrome to the operators. He remembered that he didn’t get a penny for that one. He also designed a small, flat chip antenna now being used by three major cell-phone companies, and he didn’t receive a cent for that one either. He really didn’t care if he got remunerated for his ideas, because to Mike the fun was in the challenge to make the idea work. He also knew that this was one of the crucial points that he was verbally browbeaten for when his ex-wife left, calling him a sap, a loser, and, more than once, a wimp. He wasn’t bothered in the least by the name-calling. He had been called names his entire life and was used to it by now. It was like he had developed a hard skin to absorb those verbal hits.

Mike got up and made his way over to the computer and started clicking away. Before long, he was reading, checking, and chatting on the Internet. He had a couple of people whom he would chat with in a private chat room and discuss things pertaining to computers, jobs, life, and of course, the Buffalo Bulls. He didn’t know if these electronic friends were guys or girls, nor did he care. All he got to see were codes like “WideRight23” and “ILTBB6566.”

The topics of discussion usually had a neutral theme until Saturday night and early Sunday during the football season. The emails, the instant messages, and the graphics would come at an alarming rate, almost one right after the next, it seemed. Mike wasn’t much better on the Internet, since he would fire off just as many e-mails to everyone whom he had listed in his computer to receive them. But on this weekend, Mike would receive his mail a lot faster, only because of the Pentium 4 computer and its performance abilities. On the other hand, the new PC would allow him to organize and send things more quickly to everyone else..

It was getting close to 2 PM, and Mike was getting hungry. He closed down his system, made a ham-with-dill-pickles sandwich, and sat in his black recliner and watched two college teams play their annual bowl game for bragging rights, he figured.

Questions started to circle his brain, such as, what makes the college football player that much worse than a pro player? Was it the coaching? It seems that the pro teams have one coach for each player nowadays. Maybe he could apply for a coaching job with the Bulls. He laughed out loud, feeling a little wobbly from his sixth drink.

Mike watched the end of the first game, a dot-com bowl game. Then he watched the Fiesta Bowl game, which this year came from Tempe, Arizona, a place he had never visited but enjoyed watching on TV. Oregon and Colorado were battling it out. It was a chance for the senior players to showcase their talents to scouts, which would definitely include the Buffalo Bulls. Mike knew all about the controversy surrounding the Oregon team, which, by the way, he also agreed with, since it felt like it should’ve been ranked number two in the nation, not Nebraska. Mike couldn’t understand the inane college ranking system since the teams were ranked first through twenty-fifth.
“What the hell is wrong with a play-off structure?” Mike thought.
He analyzed these football games with a degree of brain activity almost bordering on insanity. He sometimes videotaped the games and replayed the images on the screen so he could dissect what he was looking at. He would probably make a good coach if given the opportunity to run a ball club. Mike was the only person he knew who could challenge the color commentators on the Sunday and Monday games and hold his own with the experts, like Dan Fouts, Joe Thiesman, and even those five FOX guys.

What Mike didn’t know was, when his obsessive mind finally kicked into gear sometime next day, that he would have a master plan for changing professional football forever. The questions were, would he remember the dreamt-up thoughts about the plan, and would he have the desire or ambition to take his idea to a higher level? Besides, he was tired of seeing the Bulls get beat each and every year, and he had to do something about it.

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