MY HOURGLASS IS RUINING OUT OF SAND. by Michael Whelan There was a time when famous people were simply part of the scenery. That sounds terribly arrogant, so let me explain. I never believed I belonged in their world. I was lucky enough to have a career that occasionally dropped me into the middle of it. The common denominator was sports television. Nothing more. Nothing less. I spent decades in the business, eventually becoming Director of Production at HBO Sports, helping develop what became one of television's most respected sports divisions. In 1992, HBO sent me to Barcelona to produce the Summer Olympics for NBC Sports. Later, I became a vice president at The Golf Channel and helped create its production operation and programming from the ground up. Over the years, I produced more than 2,500 television shows. That's a lot of headsets. Sports took me into rooms with presidents, actors, musicians, writers, and nearly every kind of athlete imaginable. Robin Williams. Gene Hackman. Bruce Willis. Al Pacino. Meryl Streep. Anthony Hopkins. Robert De Niro. Tom Hanks. Clint Eastwood. Bill Murray. Dolly Parton. James Taylor. Glenn Frey. Elton John. Paul Simon. I wasn't collecting celebrities. I was working. It just happened to be a ridiculously good job. One afternoon Jack Nicholson stood beside his pool pouring me a scotch as casually as if we'd been neighbors for twenty years. Another night, I was guzzling tequila with Ted Turner and Jane Fonda until none of us could stand particularly well. Ted spent much of the limo ride back to the hotel throwing up out the window. Jane and I were in no condition to critique his technique. I'm grateful there were no cellphone cameras. I'm also amazed I made it to seventy. But age changes the lighting. My shelves are full of Emmys and Peabodys. Once, they represented ambition, pressure, sacrifice, and proof that maybe I knew what I was doing. Now they gather dust. Sometimes I hang a towel on one. Somewhere, my younger self is horrified. But I understand now that the awards were never the life. They were souvenirs from it. The life was the roar of arenas. The television trucks. Barcelona. Ceasars Palace. Wimbledon. The control rooms. The voice in my headset yelling, “Thirty seconds until we go live. Life doesn't need my permission to change. The shows end. The titles disappear. Someone younger sits in your office. The phone rings less. People scatter. People die. And what once felt permanent becomes memory. That makes me sad. Not bitter. Just sad. Sometimes I miss the younger man who thought there would always be another broadcast, another trip, another summer, another ordinary Tuesday with the woman he loved. I didn't know I was living memories. I thought I was simply living. Now the room is quieter. I'm seventy. The trophies are gathering dust. Rebecca isn't beside me. And this enormous life has become stories I tell. So I don't look back and think: Look who I met. I think: Look what I got to live. And I am grateful beyond words that it happened. And a little heartbroken that it already did.