My life is almost complete again. High school football season begins tomorrow night.

You think I’m kidding.

Football was the first youth sports activity I ever witnessed in person, thanks to a father who exposed me to the Jay-Livermore Falls rivalry before I grew old enough to ask him what in the name of John Taglienti an Andy was.

If I’m lucky someday, a charitable person will push my wheelchair to the edge of the hill overlooking Griffin Field in Livermore Falls, or Maxwell Field in Winthrop, or Thompson Field in Lisbon. Hopefully, they’ll be kind enough not to push me over and allow me to spend some of my final fall afternoons and evenings the way I spent my first ones.

I’ve had numerous, seasonal love affairs with other athletic endeavors, but coming home to watch a high school football game on the first Friday night in September remains a joy unmatched.

It is pure entertainment. It is raw emotion. It is sensory overload.

There’s the wafting smell of popcorn, cheeseburgers and fried dough, and much to our cardiologists’ chagrin, the taste.

There’s the post-game shake of a sweaty, muddy, bandaged, bleeding hand belonging to a 275-pound lineman and the awareness that none of those details bother you.

There’s the sound of marching bands (clearly lost on their way to the Western Maine basketball tournament, where they are sadly non-existent), the echo of a facemask-to-facemask hit, and the roar of a sideline gang that just watched the play it practiced all summer go for a 75-yard touchdown.

There’s the sight of a hyper-caffeinated coach who’s been berating #76 about his weight, foot speed and mental acuity since the start of two-a-days, embracing the kid after what the naked eyes saw as a simple block.

There’s a life lesson tucked neatly within every series of downs, and some of them are even targeted at the kids. But most of those lessons hit me squarely in a chest that never barreled into a blocking sled.

High school football has taught this alleged grown-up the value of persistence, teamwork, loyalty and attention to detail, and heck, I’m only a simple fan. A fan who felt irreparably detached and disjointed last autumn.

If you’ve caught an episode of the soap opera that is this columnist’s life, you might know that I took a vacation from the sidelines for a year, presumably for the same reasons that Ed “Too Tall” Jones had a hankering to box and Bruce Willis tried to be a pop star.

I missed a complete football season. Turns out it was the wrong one. I mean, Jay and Livermore Falls collided in a regional final, and I wrote nary a word about it. How cruel was that?

Those rivals, separated by four miles of real estate and a bridge that isn’t really a bridge, had been this simultaneously splendid only three times in the preceding quarter-century. It was a special afternoon capped by a special drive in the final two minutes that won it. And I watched it from behind the velvet rope. Not good.

Mountain Valley had some nerve winning a Class B state championship, too. My finite mind lost track of how many Falcons post-season near misses I’d witnessed since the Rumford and Mexico schools became the most successful blended family this side of “The Brady Bunch.” Hearing that they finally got to hoist the Gold Ball was like learning that my own kid got into Harvard.

Yes, the operative word there was “hearing.” Hey, I tried being part of the three-deep masses overlooking the 40-yard line last fall. I even bought a blaze orange jacket in hopes that I’d blend in. Without a clipboard in hand, however, I felt woefully unclothed most weekends.

Sorry for that image.

The image you’ll see on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons from now until Thanksgiving is a vastly different one. Look for the guy armed with a legal pad, a tri-colored pen and a smile that won’t quit.

Oh, and probably a bottle of hand sanitizer. No offense to those battle-scarred linemen, but engaging four of my senses is enough of a workout, this first year back.

Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. You may reach him by e-mail at [email protected].