It's a lucky man--and he should appreciate it, and does--when the thing he is frittering his time on is the story of the week in Arkansas, thus worthy of being his work at least for a day.
I suspect nothing I could write would connect more with readers.
So, tell the truth--did you tear up a bit, maybe more, when Devo Davis of Jacksonville got emotional?
I did, but then I cry over an occasional GEICO commercial.
Davis broke down but rallied admirably when interviewed Saturday evening on the subject of being the undeniable hero of the one-point Arkansas win over defending national champion Kansas in the 32-team round of the NCAA's March Madness.
The young hero's emotion was his own, based on an up-and-down season for his team and himself. He was a local product and veteran on a team earlier hyped too much for flashy national recruits and transfers.
But his emotion represented Arkansas as much.
We're a state long laboring in a complex about being diminished in national perception. We have invested too much in the irrational exuberance of sports, rooting time and again, mostly in disappointment, for our Razorback teams to do something about that perception.
"I know the state of Arkansas is on fire right now," Eric Musselman, the coach, told the media.
I knew back in Arkansas that happy tears were dousing the blaze.
Here was our team as the acknowledged toast of the tournament and CBS, pulling an upset with a genuinely spectacular performance that so engaged the national audience that one commentator said the entire event seemed like a movie.
This was shortly after the Hogs' coach--named Musselman, not Muscleman--took off his shirt and waved it wildly in what apparently amounted to an ironic statement of celebratory might.
So, Monday began a fresh week, with the Legislature on blessed spring break and Donald Trump boasting he'd soon get arrested, which would be not much of a story except that it would help him in the Republican presidential primary.
All of Arkansas' attention for the week was cast toward Thursday evening when these wonder Hogs would take on Connecticut in the Sweet Sixteen from Las Vegas.
I sat at the computer and waited for the news to produce column inspiration. When none did, at least that I realized at that point, I clicked onto social media and wrote that I was changing the name of my beagle Roscoe to Devo.
Someone asked about my other beagle, Sophie. I said she wanted to be Ricky IV, for Hog standout Ricky Council IV.
A woman posted that she thought Sophie was a girl. I replied that Sophie had declared herself a boy for purposes of the Sweet Sixteen. The woman asked for Sophie's--or Ricky IV's--pronouns. I said they were "spayed" and "neutered." She said those were adjectives.
I was losing my columnist's way, plainly. Then came the email from the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Oral and Visual History disinviting me to a reception Thursday evening to meet the center's new director. The reception hosts explained that everyone could meet John Davis another time but the game was on television Thursday night.
There it was--a vivid sign that the Arkansas story to be expounded upon in Wednesday's column was a basketball team, a basketball game, a basketball obsession, a basketball metaphor for Arkansas culture and Arkansas life.
Naturally, being the way I am, I took to Twitter to relate that, in 1981, U.S Reed sank a last-second shot from beyond half-court to give the Hogs a win over Louisville and a date for the Sweet Sixteen. They lost that round by 16 points to LSU.
I explained, merely for helpful context, that, often in sports after a spectacular win, a team can be distracted for the next game in the unusual media glare, and hung over from the celebratory glow.
I was told in no uncertain terms not to bring that objective mess up in here.
It got swatted back, as if by one of the Mitchell twins.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.