I think it’s super that you drafted Adrian Peterson. Now scram.

ACTUAL CAPTION — "Golden Victory": Standing approximately 12 inches tall, this gold-resin figure stands on a handsome cherry-wood base. This is the perfect perennial Fantasy Football Trophy that can be passed on from year to year with room enough to chronicle more that 20 years of league champions.

Island Packet — Attention friends, colleagues, family, people who hang out by the printer on Monday mornings, I’ll make you a deal.

I’ll stop talking about all the adorable things my son does if you stop issuing updates regarding your fantasy football team(s), because when you talk about your fictitious owning of fictitious Tom Brady I am doing what I imagine you do when I tell you about Jake’s considerable reading abilities: dreaming about ways to kill myself with whatever office supply is within reach (if it’s a letter opener, I’m in good shape; if it’s a stapler, I have to get a little more inventive).

Evidently while I was on vacation, someone installed a bright orange placard on my desk that reads PLEASE COME OVER HERE AND EXULT ABOUT YOUR STABLE OF WIDE RECEIVERS. Because in this opening week for fantasy football nerds, it is Katie bar the door for people whose otherwise healthy fantasy worlds have expanded to include Peyton Manning.

So let’s just get this out of the way: I’m really happy for you, but as these players exist primarily in your Firefox, I will have great difficulty generating the enthusiasm you’re fishing for when you say, “My first draft of the season. No. 1 pick. Who do I take?”

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This has become a particular thing with people at the newsroom, not that I’m going to identify anyone by name, like Morgan, Morgan Bonner, Packet/Gazette pre-press manager and father of an adorable baby boy who is much too young to understand why his daddy was turning Radio Flyer-red in front of his MacBook crying about Jay Cutler last week.

I avoid participating in fantasy sports for the same reason I avoid participating in real ones — I am terrible at them, and if there’s one lesson I’d like to pass on to my son, it’s this: When you’re not very good at something, quit trying immediately and resort to making fun of people in sarcastic columns shot through with thinly veiled heartbreak.

But I am in the clear minority here. There are 30 million fantasy players in the U.S. and Canada who spend an average of five hours a week managing their teams, and the industry is worth something in the ballpark of $800 million. In true American fashion it has grown to include needless litigation, as there are now sites that sell fantasy baseball insurance and settle transaction disputes, and absurd spending habits — you can get a championship trophy online for an extremely reasonable $800.

Now, understand that when I make this argument I’m hardly saying that everyone should spend their free time absorbing Doris Kearns Goodwin books and debating health care and international finance while drinking organic hot toddies from cups made of bamboo and hope, because I am no stranger to hobbies and interests that are weird and horrifying to others. For instance, if you were to name a “Weird Al” Yankovic song title right now, I’d be happy to not only tell you what album it’s on, but, if you had time, all of the lyrics. When it is 95 degrees outside and humid enough to make your clothes damp and heavy, I like to go “running,” which I’m putting in quotations because in those conditions “running” involves flumping along at speeds of astonishing slowness, sweating like Glenn Beck and inventing curse words. Also I play online Boggle. Jeez, and now that I look at it my last like 10 Tweets have all in some way mentioned the Insane Clown Posse. Kind of starting to feel terrible about myself here.

Actually, it gets worse. I once spent a summer, and by “a summer” I mean “five consecutive summers,” engaged in a fantasy baseball league populated by a group of college friends, exactly one of whom was in danger of having a girl around to be disappointed by us. This wasn’t fantasy baseball in the Internet sense; it was more of cards-and-dice situation. But that was an interactive event, something that invited getting together in someone’s basement to drink, smoke, insult each other and do whatever it is that college-age dateless people do in Northern Indiana. It was, dare I say, simple and basic and pure, and our trophies only cost $450.