I got volunteered to take my nephew to his Little League game today, and it's the finals, or tournament, or playoffs, or whatever you call it. It is living-on-the-equator hot out today, with a mugginess in the air that only people from the South deserve. I was told that I had to sit and watch the game, instead of dropping the kid off and heading for the library, because if his team loses this game, there's a second game immediately after, but if they win, they get to go home.
I am told that the team is quite bad, so to be prepared for a double-header.
I put a blanket on the grass and sat on it, and the game started as soon as I'd turned on my laptop. But as I looked at the various batters, I couldn't say which of the identical-looking boys was my nephew (who I'd dropped off just five minutes before). You'll often hear how racist white people are, because we can't tell the difference between Donnie Yen and the guy who played Ip Man (or worse, the difference between the guy from GET OUT and the guy from JUDAS & THE BLACK MESSIAH), but I couldn't tell the difference between my flesh and blood nephew and the six other ten year olds in line around him.
Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In July: 1277
I'm not a sports guy, not in the slightest. But I keep writing these high school-set stories, and it's hard not to include sports or sports references in them. That's such a big part of school, with rivalries and away games and trophies and pep assemblies and practices and statistics. There's a teenage boy in the bullpen right now, announcing each batter and playing a little seven or eight second clip of a pop song to accompany each one, and I sort of wish that that had been me when I was his age, that I could've participated (at least peripherally) in sports with the popular kids.
Just not football.
Even so, this isn't exactly riveting. My nephew is just sitting there, in the outfield, between second and third, and I guess he's at least watching the batters, if not the ball. When I was his age, I probably couldn't have managed even that.
Well, the boy did make a run just now (in the first inning), but mostly because he was walked, and the batters after him were also walked. Pitching must be hard for kids, especially since they have to perch themselves on that plate, instead of just getting closer to the batter so they didn't have to wrench the ball quite so hard. Guess that's why not everybody does it, huh?
Push-ups Today: 195
Push-ups In July: 1529
Since I have the laptop, I can write a little bit--at least more than I did yesterday--but the heat is so oppressive, I think I can only keep it up for a few minutes. Even touching the laptop is hard in this sun and lack of wind. I wonder how hot it would have to be for the keys to start melting or the monitor to start warping.
Well, my nephew's team ended up losing the first game (where he actually made a run), and winning the second (where he struck out rather unspectacularly), which means his team is still in the running, only barely. My sister showed up in between games, and she told me that I could leave, which I most definitely wanted to do.
But I didn't. In for a penny, in for a pound, as they say. Or ought to say more often, you know?
Words Today: 388
Words In July: 11,776
*I was going to have him go on an angry rant about In-N-Out Burger today, but chickened out, knowing that to Californians, that's tantamount to calling the Virgin Mary a streetwalker or Muhammed an average person. I don't want any more hatred toward the character, much less me, though between the two of us, In-N-Out has worse fries than any burger chain, including grade-Z places like Purple Turtle, Chubbys, and Arctic Circle.
3 comments:
Hey, we loved Chubby's in my household. We still miss it to this day. Shit on In-N-Out's fries all you want. This Californian won't complain at all, but don't call Chubby's grade-Z. None of you would be alive if it weren't for my Chubby's.
Just for that, I'm going to go to Chubby's at some point this summer, and find out if you're wrong or not. And none of us would be chubby if it weren't for your Chubby's either.
They're all good, but you should go to my Chubby's...that is if it still exists. I don't know. It's in the shopping center that used to have the grocery store in it until the grocery store became a super grocery store down the street. I know that this has nothing to do with the taste of the food, but I always dug on the fact that they had license plates all over the walls there as part of their decorations. I like that. I've collected a few license plates in my day, although my oldest son claimed them, and they became his collection. I asked them where they got all the plates, and the owner said that he had a friend that worked in an autobody shop, and they just had a crapton of them left over from cars they'd worked on. He sold him the lot of them for cheap. I wish I could have intercepted a few of them for my own collection.
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