Darrell Jackson Shooting for Opening Day

	No, Darrell Jackson doesn't have stomach flu. It's an analogy. ? Getty Images

You know, I was thinking, it's got to be the most annoying thing in the world for a professional athlete to discuss how his rehabilitation from injury is going.

This sense harks back to a time when I saw a locker room interview with Emmitt Smith when he was in Dallas. He either didn't play in the game, or was playing in one of his first games back from an injury, something like that. Can't remember. There was a swarm of media types around his locker, though, and of course the first thing one of them asked was, "How are you feelin'?"

Smith drew a middling-to-heavy sigh, then said, with no small showing of being sick of answering the question, "I... feel... fine." He then looked up, and a few media types let out a grim chuckle, and Smith rolled his eyes and cracked a closed-lips grin himself.

I mean, the journos are just doing their job, not unreasonably so, and Smith was being paid (among other things) to answer questions. But it's gotta be a drag to have to answer to an entire community's protracted concern over your health, you know?

Let's say I've got dry heaves. Nah, something worse... not life-threatening worse, but nothing physically destructive either (the only thing I've ever broken on my body was a fingernail)... Okay, let's say, stomach flu. I'm filling up the room with noxious liquid. I'm spewing up so much that I might as well be posing for promotional snaps with Ellen Burstyn and Max Von Sydow for The Exorcist. You know what I want? Rest. Rest and television. Preferably cable. And I don't want to pick up anything. I just want to rehab. I... want... to be... alone.

The day after I get well enough to work, I wouldn't want to continually answer questions about how I'm feeling the day after. I'm fine. I'm feeling fine. Look, see, I'm holding down this minestrone, no problems. Okay? So just let me get back to what I was doing. I promise, if I get sick again, the minute I fall apart and start up with the stomach flu, then you, our workmates, and some poor sap's desktop is probably going to know first.

I'm just sayin'. Gotta be a drag. I'm not even being sarcastic here.

Anyway. The point of this whole thing is that Darrell Jackson expects to return on Opening Day, according to an audio interview on Sando's blog, recorded at Jackson's appearance for the Boys and Girls Club in Puyallup.

Jackson was very good-natured when asked about whether missing practice hurt him: "I'm like Iverson! I don't need to practice! Practice?!"

That was long-winded, wasn't it? Sorry. Trying to not phone it in now that camp's over.