THe thing about softball is it’s the ultimate regression. A can of beer on a picnic table is about every summer night (and every spring weekend) for so very many suburban kids all over the country. Now, I am a bit younger but closer to my mother’s age way back when.
The suburbs, to the best of my recollection, were about finding a place to go. At a certain age, your friends and you just wandered from empty park to parking lot to golf course to ball field. All you needed was a place to congregate and beer and weed were icing on the cake.
About a million three years ago, I bounced into homeroom come a Monday morning and the nerdish kids who were half of my school life confronted me. “I heard you got drunk and taken advantage of this weekend.”
What happened was roughly six kids and six bottles of Miller High Life and a town park. Some time during the evening, I allowed Dan to kiss me under the shadow of an old oak. I wore a sturdy cotton turtleneck and a merino wool “ski sweater” with the kind of stripes that said “racing” or “Brady Bunch” rerun. Somewhere in the kissing and the sipping beer, Dan may or may not have gotten his hand between the layers of cotton and wool. Buried below, protected by not just the fortress of turtleneck but appropriate undergarments, lay my breasts.
Those were the mysterious things that happened at parks.
Before that, though, there’s the game. I kind of wish I could have played Little League or some kind of non-school-related ball. Girls didn’t have that back in the dark ages, and gym class sucked. Not only do I get to occasionally throw and catch and swing and hit, but I get to yell things out like “the play’s at first.” Exciting stuff.
Tonight, the excitement mounted in two challenges. One, I left my bag with equipment, two balls, two gloves, two bats and a kickass whale hat I bought in Alaska, at the field. Very stupid. Stupider, there’s two pair of prescription sunglasses and a point and shoot camera at the bottom of the bag.
I realized my stupid forgetfulness while I was still in town, and I hadn’t yet headed on the wide open highway. Only problem was I remembered AFTER the local constable pulled me the fuck over. Apparently, not OK to go 43 in a 25-mile zone. Oops. Charming motherfucker that I am, I got a warning.
But, I wasn’t turning back on those same streets. All I wanted to do was get the hell out of Dodge and praise the gods that told me to hang back on drinking too many light beers in too few hours. Just like I earned so many, many years ago from Ms. Plotka, no shame in cradling a beer and sipping it slow over hours. Kind of like that half a Miller I drank thousands of centuries ago.
……and what was Dan wearing? 😉