Life is full of hiccups.

Actual, literal hiccups where you’re using a paper bag, holding your breath, and tapping your chest to try to get them to go away.

The figurative hiccups where a certain scenario or event isn’t going your way. Someone says a comment as smooth as sandpaper, a package is lost in the mail, a bug gets stuck inside your TV screen, a hole in your favorite pair of socks, a dog you call an ankle bitter really does bite, a co-worker who travels with you for work gets in your car with a dirty jacket and leaves your passenger seat dustier than a baseball infield in Illinois, mold on the last hoagie bun when you’re ready to make a delicious sandwich or the team you picked to win Game 3 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals, Indiana Pacers, gives up a 20-point lead to prevent a 3-0 series advantage when you’re going to Game 4 and were anxiously anticipating being present for the series closer.

If you couldn’t tell all of these happened to me in the last two days.

Through the non-physical hiccups, there are many remedies depending on who you ask.

There is music, movies, TV, food, physical activity, sleep, spending time with loved ones, playing a video game, reading a book, podcasts, traveling, driving around the town square, shopping and…you get the point.

I’ve probably used every single one of these, but my go-to, ever since I knew what they were, is sports, in all varieties.

I played, I’ve coached, I do cover them for newspapers, radio and Edge of Your Seat Podcast and I also officiate five sports.

But my hiccup remedy involving sports began with TV.

I remember being super mad at my sister the day of the 1995 Super Bowl, I was 10 and she was seven, and the anger didn’t go away until I was watching the game. There are many other examples I could list, but to avoid this column being 25 pages long, I’ll get to why I’m writing this.

Through high school and all of its drama with fake friends, ruined relations with girlfriends, not being picked first for your real friend’s dodgeball team (still drawing the line if this person was a friend or a faker) and college with some of the same issues as high school while adding becoming an adult with a long list of responsibilities, ESPN became my safe haven.

In particular, Around the Horn.

It was more than a highlight show. It was more than numbers. It was more than words.

It was a show where people could have real opinions and express them to others who may have a different opinion, and they’d settle is or debate it in an articulate, wise, entertaining, comedic fashion.

It mixed and mingled sports storylines of our favorite players and coaches with actual journalists who could break down numbers if they really wanted or needed to, while bringing in human elements such as emotion, anticipation, passion, criticism and strategy for discussion.

Host Tony Reali, called “Stat Boy” by Pardon the Interruption’s Tony Kornheiser, who seemed like he drank four Monsters before the show started, was a little of all of the adjectives I used before as he was funny, interesting, witty, and questioned, tested each of the four panelists, the journalists, on every episode.

It was the epidemy of what someone like me – going to college for journalism, a die heart sports guy, had the gift of gab and could debate with the best of them about anything – would dive into when it seemed like every other aspect of life was off its axis or could never be right.

Sitting down for 30 minutes every day to watch Around the Horn was always right.

As I graduated and got older, and technology had the advancement of podcasts, I didn’t watch the show anymore, I listened to it. I can’t remember the exact year I began listening to it on Spotify, but it has to be either 2015 or 2016, as I scan life events I can time stamp parts of life with.

Since then, I’ve never missed a show. I may not have listened to it on the exact day, but by Sunday, I listen to the Monday through Friday offerings.

In March, two months ago, it was announced Around the Horn was being canceled after 23 years on TV. When I first heard it, I thought, ‘Well, all good things have to come to an end.’

Then I thought, ‘Why, why do good things have to come to an end?’

The long list of hiccups never ends. They come in different shapes and sizes and continue to make us squirm, yell, turn red, drink more, or cry.

Why can’t the aspects of life we enjoy always exist, just like the hiccups. Sure, they could come in other forms, like hiccups, but they’re never the same. Once you like something, you like it, not the copy or the replacement.

I watched the last episode of Around the Horn on Friday, May 28 and then listened to it the next day on my way to get the dirty jacket. I tried to laugh as much as I could, get the most out of it, and remembered the moments in life Around the Horn helped me get through.

It sounds crazy (I called myself nuts), but I feel like I’m losing a set of best friends as Reali, Woody Page. J.A. Adande, Tom Cowlishaw (who went through sobriety on the show), Bill Plaschke, Kevin Blackistone, Jay Mariotti (before he got in trouble), Jemele Hill, and so many more, will no longer be talking to me every day.

I learned depths of sports and its figures I didn’t previously know, I picked up debating techniques, the importance of stats, when too many numbers are too much, how to be funny and sarcastic instead of sarcastic and funny, and when enough is enough and it’s time to move on.

I’ll proceed to move forward, but not before saying thank you and sharing appreciation for a show which helped me become a newspaper and magazine writer, a podcast host, a radio broadcaster and a more sensible, understanding person who can express it with emotion, passion, and comedy.

Thank you, Around the Horn, for being my favorite hiccup remover.