They, not to be confused with the ubiquitous, indefinite they who might tell you that a dog’s mouth contains fewer germs than yours, told me I’d miss the fun-and-games department.

You’ll hate sitting home watching games in your jammies no matter what beverage is influencing your mood, they predicted.

You’ll lose interest in having nights and weekends off after the fifth bleep of the third episode in some random “American Chopper” marathon, they chided.

Ye who recognize thyself as they in this equation are still recovering from the rejection. That’s because they (you? he? she? it?) were left with little recourse but to blow kisses in the general direction of my backside when I walked away 10 months ago, dead set on different ideas, different plans, different aspirations.

It was fantastic fodder for a song. Too bad Billy Joel already wrote it. Go ahead with your own life. Leave me alone.

Well, I’m here with one of those cleansing confessions, the kind some of us poor suckers make about a half-dozen times more frequently than the rest of the free world.

They were right. I was wrong. As in Sparky Lyle is all yours for Danny Cater and future considerations wrong. Rick Pitino will save the Boston Celtics wrong. Bill Belichick ain’t worth a first-round draft pick wrong.

So, like the ghosts in “Poltergeist,” Old Coke and the sore throat that won’t respond to antibiotics, I’m back.

It’s not that I thought they were smoking reefer with Ricky Williams and trying to draw closer to God when they said my life without sports was as preposterous as a Super Bowl halftime show without frontal nudity.

It’s just that I couldn’t have imagined precisely what I would miss.

Like exchanging Christmas cards with the Maine Principals’ Association.

Trying to protect my clipboard from the drizzle while squinting to identify the mud-covered number of the third-string fullback who just scored his team’s only touchdown in a 56-6 high school football defeat.

Listening to any pep band from Eastern Maine offer up an abbreviated version of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” while awaiting the start of a basketball tournament game at Bangor Auditorium.

Standing with a straight face and letting a hoarse, ruddy man declare that his boys had their backs to the wall, gave a total team effort, overcame a tremendous amount of adversity and showed a great deal of heart without stopping him in mid-cliche to say, “Coach, what the hell does that mean?”

Risking my extremities at a hockey game in Pettengill Arena while listening to Lewiston fans tell me my paper obviously favors Edward Little, hearing EL sympathizers tell me I should get out of bed with Lewiston, and being accused of hating St. Dom’s completely.

Having competition cheerleaders tell me they resent stereotypes and want to be taken seriously as a sport, then force me to listen to “Oh Mickey, you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind” during each of the next 15 routines.

Watching a grown man cry at the end of a championship game … while his son from the losing team tries to console him with a hug.

Scrawling a backwards K’ after a senior utility infielder who hasn’t pitched since farm league just wriggled his team out of a second-and-third-with-nobody-out jam.

Eating too many French fries at the Colisee.

Calling my editor from Augusta to report that the final game of the night just went into a fourth overtime and proposing that we consider deadline a mere suggestion.

Jotting down every insipid word screamed at a referee, in case I ever decide to compile them in a book someday. (Of course, in order to buy that book, each referee in question would be forced to submit to an eye examination, declare how much the home team is paying him, and sign an affidavit acknowledging that there are, indeed, two teams out there.)

Hustling out the door of a gymnasium in South Paris, Livermore Falls or Poland while engaged in conversation with a relative stranger who’s thinking aloud, “You must have the coolest job in the world.”

Admitting that he or she is absolutely right.

It’s terrific to be back. Even if they enjoy an inexpensive thrill for a week or two by gloating that they told me so.

Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His e-mail is [email protected].