5 : 147 : 20 : 3
Wednesday night, Oxbear surprised me with a set of free tickets to the game for Thursday afternoon. Down low in a single row isolated by cement path and iron fence. Linnea-Irish and I felt a little important when we stashed ourselves twenty-something rows behind the right side of home plate on a balmy afternoon in early May.
Maybe Adam Wainwright is right – maybe this team is special. Sometimes things click when they should. Best record in all of baseball is nothing to complain about, even when you’re only a month into the season. But I’d still say – from Carrie-Bri’s and my podcast perspective – the waters are highly cautious.
Eventually, Linnea walked off to hunt up some lunch. She returned about half an inning later with a double-cheese for herself and a side of free fries with very sweet ketchup for myself. I guess it was only about the fourth time in all those years that I actually had ballpark food.
Half an hour later, those fries had sent me into some kind of sleepy lethargy. That’s when I remembered why I don’t eat ballpark food as a general rule. But I forgot about it after awhile when John Lackey was handed a standing O on his return to the dugout.
So … I guess I somehow failed to understand the full extent of Puck’s Education Exposition that evening back at school. He tends to brush things off as being “no big deal” most of the time. So I figured he’d show us his Conestoga wagon model – complete with swimming pool, pot of gold, stacks of Garfield (for those tedious hours crossing the prairies), and cheeseburger bumper sticker – then sing a quick song or two before we called it a night and split for home.
About half an hour into the program, I was watching my son not only sing his guts out with all the other 1st and 3rd graders on stage, but also enthusiastically perform an English Country Dance. In rhythm. And I was regretting not inviting the grandparents.
Afterwards, he pushed through the crowd towards me for a big bear hug.
Funny how things happen. Who knew one day I would watch my son dance with the niece of an old Sunday School classmate in the same sanctuary where I attended church for nine years.
Lightning splintered the sky on the drive home. About time. Per Oxbear’s request, I picked up cheese and crackers at Schnuck’s just as the rain began to fall.