I went on TV tonight and lied.

OK, not really lied. But when Elizabeth Brackett asked me on Chicago Tonight if I was shocked when I heard that Chicago Blackhawks’ star Patrick Kane had been arrested after allegedly robbing and beating a 62-year-old cabdriver in an early morning dispute in Buffalo Sunday, I first babbled about how as a sportswriter, you’re never really shocked when an incident like this happens regarding a professional athlete but that yes, it was surprising given that Kane did not seem to fit that profile.

Surprising? I’m surprised I tempered my comments when, in fact, my reaction when my 11-year-old son’s friend texted him about Kane was something like, “WHAT? NO WAY? Little Patrick? I don’t believe it.” I may have even thrown a “My God” in there.

As if it was my cute little blond nephew was the one who got pinched.

And that’s the point.

Was I shocked because Patrick Kane looks like my nephew? Was it because I felt like I knew him after visiting his childhood home in Buffalo a few years ago, went to lunch with his parents and ate Patrick’s favorite spaghetti at their favorite restaurant? Or was it because I stood in his bedroom and looked at his little bed with the hockey blanket and pillows and trophies neatly arranged on shelves above it, and plaques and pictures on the walls?

Was I just as shocked when the allegations came out earlier this summer about Bulls’ star Derrick Rose cheating on his college entrance exams, and a photo circulated on the Internet with him at a college party, flashing gang signs? (He later said he was just fooling around.)

I am not suggesting that those allegations are as serious as what Kane is charged with. But it’s hard not to compare the two. Both are their team’s and their league’s top draft picks; both are 20 years old (Rose is six weeks older) and both, I had deduced through interviewing and observing them, are seemingly good kids with good intentions.

I know I would have been just as shocked if Rose was arrested on felony charges. But I also know that when I blogged about Rose a couple months ago that I was suspicious of him, even as I repeated allegations for which there was no proof.

I rationalized that my suspicions stemmed from being burned by athletes’ transgressions before, athletes whom I also initially believed and trusted. I wrote that I didn’t really know Rose at all.

And so as I sit here, my TV makeup coagulating in my pores because I know how long it will take me to scrub it off and I want to get my thoughts down, I have no thoughts. At least not any that make sense.

Am I racist or is this the proverbial white liberal guilt kicking in?

Would I have jumped all over Rose if he had been in this situation when I find myself wanting to giving Kane the benefit of the doubt and hoping that there is an explanation that will at least make it all a little more palpable?

Do I know Patrick Kane any better than Derrick Rose because I stood in Patrick’s bedroom with his parents and looked at his little trophies, and Rose’s mother did not want to be interviewed.

I wrote that I wanted to believe Rose when he said he didn’t cheat. I still do. It will be harder to buy anything Kane says but I still want to – particularly when the last time I had a conversation with his father several months ago, he said his wife was “mad” at Patrick for playing with his mouthpiece instead of wearing it like he was supposed to when he crashed into a teammates and cracked his front teeth.

When I heard the news Sunday, I pictured his parents grounding him.

There was a time when a hockey player going out, getting drunk and maybe even hitting a cabdriver would not have created the scandal it does today. Maybe we’re more civilized. Or maybe it’s because we pay athletes millions of dollars to  perform on the athletic field but also to be the face of their franchise.   

Maybe it’s because we expect more from them.

Even when they seem to disappoint us so damn often.

Went to my high school reunion last night.

Very interesting.

A former classmate and friend who we will call “Tony” because that’s what we agreed his pretend name would be (his real name is Bob), accused me of going only to collect blog material.

This is only partially true.

I went hoping to collect blog material.

No, that’s not true either.

Actually, I didn’t want to go at all because I felt slightly fat and am very insecure, but my husband said, “If nothing else, maybe you’ll get a good blog out of it” as if this is a dealmaker for everything these days.

I don’t know too many people except perhaps the Homecoming Queen – and ours did not come – who do not feel at least a tad apprehensive about going to their high school reunion. Either that or just ambivalent, the reasoning that “Anyone I want to see, I still keep in touch with, so why go see people I wasn’t even really friends with 30 years ago?”

But I can say this morning with full conviction and only a teeny hangover from my two free drinks that I am glad I went. Very glad. Because here’s what happens or at least happened to me.

All those people who you never kept in touch with or maybe weren’t even friends with? There’s still a connection, a really cool connection when you get 100 or so people into a room all born in the same year (accept for this one guy in a Bergundy sports jacket whom nobody knew and all suspected he wandered in thinking it was the ’69 Niles West class reunion by mistake).

In the case of Niles West — and I’m sure most high schools unless you live on the prairie — several suburbs and junior highs fed into the school. So I had two experiences last night. One was with all the Lincolnwood “kids” I’ve known since kindergarten (the Wooders) and the other was with the kids from Morton Grove, the other predominant suburb feeding into Niles West (the Grovers).

Though I had a wonderful time seeing the Grovers and later bragged that I was one of the few Wooders who crossed over at the reunion and had a great time talking to them (even “Tony”), it was especially fun with the Wooders (I’m sure the Grovers felt this way as well).

Mind you once again, these were not people with whom I have shared a bond for the 30-plus years since. In fact, one good friend from grade school whose name I can’t use for many reasons I couldn’t possibly go into (we’ll call her “Susie” because those are the names we all have – normal girl names like Susie and Debbie and Nancy and Julie and Lisa and Karen, even Karyn – and NOT Carson and Dakota and Winter), asked me why we never talked to each other after junior high.

Because I’m me, I was instantly mortified, assuming I did or said something terrible to her (this was not my normal behavior but we’re talking about 13-year-old girls here and this is a wild and wonderful and truly evil age).

“Susie” quickly assured me I did nothing of the kind but that I just “disappeared” in high school. I assured her that I was in the gym if anyone was looking, and that I thought everyone else disappeared in high school.

Same thing with my kindergarten boyfriend Michael. I loved Michael. Adored him. We both shared a similar speech impediment and a love for Romper Room (or was that my kindergarten boyfriend Howard? I got around in kindergarten).

Anyway, when I asked another classmate Steve, if he knew who the bald guy on the dance floor was, he told me it was Michael. My Michael. I immediately ditched Steve and sprinted toward Michael – or the bald guy I thought was Michael – only to find it was Jimmy, a Grover who did not know me and seemed slightly alarmed. But NEXT to Jimmy was my Michael, also bald (sorry, Michael but you are — shaved head not balding, so I can say this without feeling badly because I think he knows).

There was something weird and wonderful about the kindergarten thing last night. I must have talked to a half-dozen people from Miss Tatz’s kindergarten class, all of whom had vivid memories of it. I’m pretty sure it was because Miss Tatz was not a normal kindergarten teacher but a Playboy bunny posing as a kindergarten teacher. The boys, even at five, had wild crushes on her and the girls all wanted her white Go-Go boots, micro-mini skirts and fishnet panty hose. Yes, she wore these to school – also brought her Lhasa Apso one day – which I suspect is why I don’t think she had a long teaching career.

My friend Kathy remembered asking her mother for fishnet pantyhose like Miss Tatz and getting rebuffed (her mom was strict). I begged for white go-go boots and my mother finally relented. But shortly after I put them on, I fell down the stairs and that was the end of the Go-Go boots.

I also had another memory of kindergarten I did not share with Michael. Mind you, I do not remember extremely important adult things most of the time, but I do recall that in Miss Tatz’s room, we had a large gray tub of cardboard blocks that looked like red bricks. And I remember that one day, Michael and I were inside the tub flinging them around the room.

When Miss Tatz looked up at the precise time I was flinging, she made me put my head down (which was extremely traumatic, particularly since it meant I had to miss Show-and-Tell and I had a really good thing to show and tell about that day). But first she asked me why I did such a thing. Naturally, I replied “Because Michael told me to,” and she said, “If Michael told you to jump in Lake Michigan, would you?” and I said, in a very tiny voice, “Yes” because I would have.

Of course, I shared none of this with Michael either then or last night because I was busy babbling about Romper Room and other things that men never remember. In fact, I am reasonably sure most of the men in the room didn’t remember high school, let alone their hot kindergarten teachers (except for Steve, he still remembers Miss Tatz in a slightly creepy way).

But all things considered, it was a really fun reunion, even considering that it cost $77 and all we got was cheese and crackers and taffy apples because one of our classmates has a taffy apple company (which was a very nice perk) and the two free drinks.

But we left with much more. At least I did. By 47 and 48, people mature (with a few exceptions). There was no high school pettiness, no cliques, only the camaraderie of a group of people who shared our childhoods together, who know things about you that very few people outside the room do and who, at least for a few hours one Saturday night, believed we were all great friends.

Except for that guy in the Burgundy sports jacket. I’m still not sure about him.

I have nothing against cornfields, per se. I would maybe even like them if corn on the cob was less expensive this summer. But I don’t especially like working amongst them as I have this past week at the Chicago Bears training camp.

Training camp, spring training, Draft Day. To many sports fans and sportswriters, this is fabulous, compelling stuff. I would sooner spend the day scrubbing floors.

There is a reason they do not sell tickets to attend these events, though if they did, I am sure people would shell out the cash no matter the price. More than 11,000 people showed up the same day I did on the campus of Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Ill., most of whom at one point or another yelled at me that I was in their line of sight as I paced along the sidelines waiting for it to be over.

After telling one man – in my nice voice with no swear words – that he didn’t have to scream at me, I surrendered to the accepted etiquette and took a knee.

I looked around to see if anyone else was excruciatingly uncomfortable and it was hard to detect. I tried sitting but was soon reminded that was not allowed. The reason they make you take a knee on the sideline of a football practice is so you will not get killed by a runaway tight end, the logic being that if you’re standing or kneeling, you can easily jump out of the way and avoid getting run over.

I tried to assure the Bears official that I could not possibly avoid on oncoming rush from a kneeling position any more than I could from a sitting one, and I work out regularly (see: yesterday’s blog). But they weren’t really interested in discussing  the matter.

It briefly brought back memories of one of the first major-league baseball games I ever covered when I innocently hooked a finger in the netting of the cage as I watched batting practice.

“Do you like that finger?” a coach asked me.

“Excuse me,” I responded cleverly.

“If you want to keep it, you might want to unhook it from there,” he said.

I barely had time to thank him when a foul tip came speeding back into the net at precisely the same place my severed finger would have been.

I realize that when I cop to things like this, or admit to being bored watching football drills, that I risk the chance of sounding like a dumb girl who has no business covering sports for a living if I can’t appreciate the beauty of a tackling dummy.

But I do not think this is a gender thing. I suspect many of those taking a knee around me to be faking their enthusiasm, that they are really not having fun going down the 76-man roster and counting each player on the field to see who may be missing, and that their knees hurt just as much as mine do.

I suspect they are also bored on Draft Day watching a clock tick down on a television screen for two days straight, and are, like me, tempted to switch channels to a good movie, but will never admit it.

If you spend more than seven minutes at home doing this, I simply have nothing to say to you.

And to those thousands of people in Bourbonnais who arrive hours early in order to situate your lawn chairs to just the right angle in front of the tackling dummies?

I’m taking a knee. Shut up already.

I hate when people talk about working out, tell you how many miles they ran or how many push-ups they did.  

Writing about it, however, is a whole different story.

I can’t even remember anymore why I exercise. I’m pretty sure I stopped liking it years ago. I have no idea how to calibrate calories when I eat, so I definitely don’t know how to subtract them when I work out, and I don’t believe it when the treadmill does it for me.

I would say I do it for my health except that I’m so sore most mornings that I make squeaking noises, so I’m not buying that so easily either.

I do know that it makes me feel productive somehow, particularly when I’m not feeling so much otherwise. But then I can turn a load of laundry into a constructive experience if I really try hard enough.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, I exercise in the morning, mostly so I don’t have to think about it, just go and get it over with. Also, I think I have less chance of throwing up with less in my stomach, though I’ve never researched that thoroughly.

Tonight, I went to the ‘Y’ because my daughter Amanda wanted to use the elliptical machine. She would like us to buy our own elliptical machine for the house, but much like her wish for a Cadillac Escalade to replace our embarrassing minivan, we ignore her.

My husband Rick wanted to take a walk, which we often do at night during the summer. And Alec, having no conscience at 11 to bog him down, simply wanted to eat another snack and play his new Wii game.

Our compromise was to all go our own separate ways.  

Exercising with your kids can be fun. I especially love it when the women in our aerobics classes bring along one of their cocky (re: cute and skinny) college-aged daughters and halfway through, the kid drags herself out red-faced and has to wait by the snack machine.

I didn’t watch Amanda tonight as I was busy hyperventilating on the treadmill while listening to Campbell Brown interview Whoopi Goldberg on CNN. I like watching TV while I am in extreme pain and don’t know how people managed in health clubs before each treadmill had its own little set attached.

I especially like watching Oprah and feeling very haughty as she and Dr. Oz talk about avoiding cardiac plaque build-up with exercise. But more often than not, I’m tuned into the Today Show watching Matt and the gang scarfing down Emeril’s jambalaya at 8 in the morning and feeling very jealous that they have such great jobs.

Amanda listened to her i-pod, which I embarrassingly referred to as a Walkman (they tell me this is not unlike when I leave the room in the middle of something good on TV and ask my kids to “freeze frame” so I won’t miss anything).

Then, after lingering just a little too long near the cute guy doing stomach crunches, Amanda and I debated how hungry exercise made us.

We all met up again, as we so often do, back home in the kitchen. There, we bored each other with our tales of exercise while watching Alec eat a giant bowl of ice cream.

It’s just not right.

After a hectic few days of re-connecting with Bears training camp and Bourbonnais, Ill. (neither of which I can recommend),  and attending a Doobie Brothers concert where middle-aged white people attempted to hear some funky Dixieland and dance a honky tonk (not a pretty sight), I spoke this morning to a group my husband likes to call my “people.”

He says this as a dig, of course, because after 18 years of marriage, compliments are viewed suspiciously by both of us.

“My people,” as he calls them, generally fall into the category of all those over the age of 70. And he’s right. I love older people.  For starters, I feel I have a lot in common with them like persistent heartburn, a fondness for eating at 4:30 and a penchant for talking about the next meal beginning at breakfast.

Maybe it’s because, as the youngest of four children and separated from my next-closest sibling by seven and a half years, I spent a lot of time alone in the house with my parents. Aside from picking up my father’s Maalox habit, I bonded with them to the extent that I still feel most comfortable with people in their age group.

I should point out that my mother exhibited almost none of the qualities associated with older people. Before she was sick, she stayed up late, slept in, kept the air-conditioning blasting and rarely wore a sweater.

Along that same vein, my in-laws – other than packing for trips two weeks ahead of time, and starting each day in the middle of the night – are also atypical for their age group.

This is particularly true as it relates to their social life, which is busy and exciting and involves more movies and dinners out in the average month than my husband and I have experienced in our entire marriage.

My goal is to be half as cool as they are some day.

That said, what can I say, older people like me and I like them. I don’t mind when they call me “Mitzy” instead of Missy, I envy them for their choice of sensible shoes and give me a good piece of pound cake over tiramisu any day.

I often get invited to talk to senior groups and if I can, I always accept, even when I’m paid in mandel bread. This morning, I spoke to a men’s club gathering that was preceded by a half hour or so of business matters.

Once, I spoke to a women’s temple group in which the business matters (raffle, silent auction, tributes to past members and, of course, minutes of last meeting) took up the first three hours of the three-and-a-half-hour program.

Today, it only seemed like three hours.

“I’m sure all of you know ‘Walt,’ ” the first speaker, who we’ll call Ed, told us. “He’s around here all the time and wears a brown suit and walks stooped over?”

The membership nodded.

“Well, he died this weekend,” said Ed.

Sighs all around, as they passed a get-well card for someone else.

We were told of gallbladders removed and blood work done and weakened conditions until I vowed to check myself into the hospital for a full work-up as soon as I left.

Seamlessly, Ed segued into a regular feature known as dirty one-liners. This is a popular portion of the senior men’s club circuit. Warms them up for the woman sportswriter. It’s about this time that I try to conjur up the raunchiest lockerroom tales I can remember.

But first, there was more serious business to tend to, in this case the passage of amendments to the club by-laws.

During this part of the meeting, I seriously considered slipping out the back door for fear that it would eventually have to be broken up by police in riot gear. This made Morty Seinfeld’s re-election campaign for president of the condo board at Del Boca Vista phase III look like real life and my morning like a sitcom.

Men cursed and were shouted down and then things got really unpleasant as one member asked that the amendments be read over again.

It was about this time that a doctor was paged to help with someone else in the senior center, which provided a much-needed break in the proceedings as I silently hoped no cutting-edge medical procedures were required.

My people were out of control.

Thankfully, order was eventually resumed, I knocked ‘em dead – well, you know, not really – and I was out by 11:35, only 35 minutes past lunch hour but still a good four before dinner.