Wednesday, like most days, is a shadow creeping along the hardwood floor -- slow, aimless and in a few hours, faded and forgotten.
"Here I sit," M.L. Lagarde said with comedic delivery, proof a recent hospital stay didn't touch his sense of humor. "I don't know when I'm going back to work, but I know I'm going. (Athletic Director) Rick Dickson calls and asks about that. 'Pop, how you doing?' Hey, I'm doing OK. I just need to go do something.
"It's driving me nuts."
Lagarde, whose three-decade-plus tenure as student-athlete and administrator makes him perhaps the most familiar face in Tulane athletics, just got home from the hospital a week ago. Nothing too serious he promises and wants concerned friends to believe. He's fine. Really. Just some fluid that needed to be removed, although the further he explains the more complicated it sounds. Trust him, he has survived worse.
In 1985, doctors discovered an infected leak in Lagarde's artificial aortic valve that two years earlier replaced the weak valve responsible for abbreviating his collegiate tennis career. During the operation, Lagarde's heart stopped.
"I actually died on the table," he said. "Well, here I sit."
Yes, here he sits in this modest Metairie home well secluded from the Veterans Boulevard noise. The 76-year-old special assistant to the Tulane athletic director is more than midway through a daily routine he has grown to despise. Wake up, read the paper, take his dog Pepper for a walk much shorter than the two miles he used to travel before these recent health problems and eat breakfast.
"Boy, you got a long day ahead of you now," he said. "It's only 8 a.m."
His older brother, Merkl, who used to take M.L. to Tulane football games as a kid, tries to get him to watch "The Price is Right." Lagarde just can't get into it. He runs a couple of errands, maybe has lunch with friends even though he needs to watch his salt intake. Come home, watch a ballgame, maybe some French Open highlights and that's a day.
"Pathetic, isn't it?" he asked before laughing.
It's especially maddening this time of year, when you really get a chance to know and interact with student-athletes now that classes are out. There's nothing like it, nothing better, Lagarde said -- reaffirming why he gets out of bed on days he would rather not and why he is sick of retirement talk. Baseball is in session, basketball is recruiting, football is preparing and graduates are asking "Grandpa" for job leads and advise.
He misses that.
"You see them with their game faces down right now," he said. "You see them as human beings. You see them all over campus, and they come up and hug you. It's a whole different world from what you live in."
Since 1974, when Lagarde left private business and his gig as a freelance sportswriter for the sports information director position at Tulane, the bond he has shared with student-athletes has been cherished. Sure, there have been some jerks, some know-it-alls. But at Tulane, he said, they are greatly outnumbered.
Though separated by generations, Lagarde still relates to the demands and pressures put on student-athletes and is aware of their triumphs and disappointments. He has been there.
During a routine tonsillectomy, doctors discovered Lagarde had a weak aortic valve, causing them to determine he needed to refrain from strenuous activity such as tennis where, as a collegian, he was ranked nationally, selected as a member of the U.S. Junior Davis Cup team and picked to play in the junior division at Wimbledon.
"You sit on that and you just keep sitting on it and then you let your life pass away," Lagarde said. "There is some remorse that I didn't get the chance to see what would have happened in tennis. But I let it go. It's just like retirement. There are places I want to see more than I've had the chance to see on basketball trips where it's: plane, hotel, gym, plane. But I have time for all of that. It will come."
Lagarde's soft eyes have seen the rise of the female athlete, the power of television money and the hypocrisy of the term student-athlete be challenged with recent bylaws during his time at Tulane. He has been there for everything -- from an undefeated football season to the near extinction of the athletic program, from games so monumental they're identified only by score (14-0) to lopsided affairs that tested the scoreboard's capacity.
Sometimes, Lagarde admitted, he enjoys looking back while waiting for his health to allow him to go forward.
Lagarde looks down. Pepper surrenders to the afternoon's pace and is asleep at the base of Lagarde's feet.
"At 3 o'clock, she'll come -- I'll be sitting in the chair over there -- and sit in front of me or in front of Mrs. Lagarde and say, 'It's 3 o'clock. Time I get a walk.' "
On command, those magic words jolt Pepper awake.
"No, we're not going for a walk right now," he said as the dog drops her head and goes back to sleep. Lagarde glances at the clock -- 3:07 p.m. He can't believe it. For once, time is speeding through this sluggish leave of absence.
"I'm sure I'm driving Mrs. Lagarde crazy, and I'm tired of watching television," he said. "Tulane is also my home. I swear I've been there so much that I get in the car and put it in DRIVE and it takes itself to Tulane. It even knows where to park."