Opining Day

Ah, yes. Baseball season is officially upon us.

For those of us who are die-hard baseball fans, the 150 days between the last game of the World Series, and Opening Day might as well be 150 years. In fact, anxiety starts to build up early on in the playoffs, not because of any concern about who will win (statistically speaking, one’s favorite team was probably eliminated before the regular season even ended), but because the countdown to baseball hiatus is on in earnest. Five months of no baseball to obsess over means a whole lot of down time with nothing to do.

Luckily, in this era of the 24-hour news cycle, and competition for news coverage, the off-season no longer means one has to go cold-turkey. There exists a parallel universe of “Baseball in Theory,” consisting of endless websites, sports channels, publications, blogs, listserves that help keep the baseball addict from experimenting with football or basketball. No sooner is the Major League Baseball season officially over in early November—yes, November!—than the recapping of the season begins. Then the speculation over who will win the annual player awards. Then the actual awards. Then the breakdown of who won the awards. Then the discussion of how the winning or not winning of the aforementioned award will impact the player’s ability to negotiate a better contract. Then coverage of the “Hot Stove” winter meetings where owners sign free agents, which may or may not include the aforementioned players who may or may not have won the aforementioned awards. Then analysis of each deal that was made or not made. And this barely gets the baseball fan through the winter holidays.

Seventy five percent of our family loves baseball. Since this constitutes a Super Majority in our household, and includes 100 percent of the family’s planners and financers of family outings, we tend to gravitate toward baseball-oriented activities. Annual treks to Spring Training in Arizona, a trip to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, Major League Fan Fests, baseball and memorabilia stores. Of course, we do not endorse a mob rule mentality. Hotels for such trips are chosen to be amenable to our family’s token non-baseball fan, so in those moments when she is not being dragged to a baseball event, she can briefly splash in a nice pool or get dropped off at a resort’s Kids Club, while the rest of us go to a game.  

Our statistical outlier offspring aside, I have to say, as a family, we are collectively well-informed about baseball goings-on. My son in particular is a marvel of historical and strategic information, spanning 100 years of the sport. He has classmates who like the sport, and they trade stories about games and players. But, to be honest, the depth of my son’s understanding of the intricacies and mechanics of the sport are beyond even most seasoned adult fans. To the untrained eye (and ear), my son and his classmates probably seem to be having typical 4^th grade banter about the outcome of the previous night’s games. However, in my mind I imagine it is like Stephen Hawking making small-talk with a second grader at an elementary school Science Fair. Sure, they are both technically talking about the same subject…..

Recently we have had reason to be optimistic that our lone baseball holdout seems to be coming around. We signed her up for T-Ball softball with her friends and, thankfully, their uniforms are a color (red) that she would tolerate wearing, even though her preference would be for a pink dress rather than pants, cleats and a visor. She has proven to be an enthusiastic fielder, dutifully squatting in “ready position” before charging at any ball that dribbles toward. The “No Child Left Behind” philosophy at work in 5-year-old T-Ball means that the inning is not over until every child has “batted” and reached base. This can take a very long time, especially when there are shoes to be tied and ponytails to smooth and stuffed animals to wedge out of children’s hands so they can hold a bat. So by the third or fourth batter, my husband, son and I have to turn a deaf ear to groans of “Is it over YET?” But that is not to say her interest in baseball is not growing every day. By the second game of the season, she cheerfully bobbed around the bases with nary a peep, her hands clutching the top of her batting helmet, which did not fit snugly over her head because of a fashionably large scrunchie keeping her hair in place. She stopped at third, caught me eye on the sidelines, and asked: “Can I have a snack now?”

So Not The Fonz

When I was in elementary school, I had an enormous poster of The Fonz on my wall. I actually liked Pottsie better, but I don't think there were any Pottsie posters for sale at the time. So my homage to the show "Happy Days" was Fonzie giving a big thumb's up, long before upward facing thumbs were co-opted by pre-school teachers to indicate a child had used the potty correctly.

The fact that I preferred Pottsie to the ultra cool Arthur Fonzarelli was already an early sign that I was not going to be one of the "cool" crowd. Maybe briefly in college, when I did a pretty spot-on impression of a tortured intellectual. But, hey, Henry Winkler was a Yale graduate, so it makes sense that Ivy League angst would be channeling the King of Cool himself.

My oldest child is at the age where he is kind of getting that his mom is a little dorky. I use the word "awesome" a lot, and not just when I am describing weighty philosophical matters. And not just in private when I am trying to build family self-esteem. I showcase my unhipness by yelling out awkward phrases at Little League games, usually incorporating the apparently humiliating "A" word. "Awesome cut!" I bellow when a player takes a big swing, but misses. "Awesome D!" I have been known to shriek after a competent catch of a fly ball. I think I have one more season before I am banished from games.

To make matters worse, at work I meet teenagers who are in street gangs, have elaborate tattoos, and are savvy to the ways of the world. I am a Clinical Psychologist at a large, urban Juvenile Hall. That means jail for kids. Yes, kids end up in jail. I read a court report for a teen from a part of town where very few kids end up in juvey, and her mother had told the judge that she called the police on her daughter so they could take her to juvenile hall, which the mom apparently thought was some sort of dormitory with kindly counselors. Sorry, mom, if LAPD is involved, your child is not being taken to a slumber party. So I guess I am not the only mom who is uncool.

The kids--called "minors" by probation, and "clients" by mental health--tell me about a lot of talents and interests they have. Some write poetry, paint, play sports, do hair. There are a lot of terrific, smart kids in juvey, who were born into really sad circumstances. I learn a lot from them and generally they tolerate my inability to use the right lingo to describe their interests and vices. The first time I assessed a teen for "pot" use and got a blank stare, although this kid had a pretty intense marijuana habit, I knew it was better not to even try to be hip.

One 16-year-old boy I interviewed had been a gang member for a number of years, and had a slew of gang related "tats." He was soft-spoken and a kid of few words. He wasn't giving too much away. I asked him what he liked to do for fun. He lit up and said what sounded to me like "beads." I asked him what he made. The light in his eye flickered and he sort of grunted, "huh?" Necklaces, bracelets, keychains? I was getting excited because I have dabbled in jewelry making myself. "Uh, what?" he asked, staring at me. Beads, what did he make with the beads, I continued to probe, desperate at this point not to lose the momentum. "Beads? I said Beets," he informed me, the brightness in his face now completely overshadowed by confusion and scorn. "Oh, you garden?" I queried hopefully. "Beats. Like drums. I drum," he said exasperatedly. "Oh, cool," I said, defeated.

 

Speeding Tickets (i.e. PerANciL yeRTmeRy)

When I ponder the qualities needed to be a good spectator of a cultural event, I tend to think of an interest in the event, a tolerance for being in close quarters with people not previously known to you, and an ability to be in said large crowds without emitting significant odor. However, the cultural community, being somewhat elitist by nature, has even more stringent criteria than I do: They require us not only to be sweet-smelling, non-claustrophobic, interested patrons, but ones who also possess a ticket for the event in question.

However, it is not enough to merely possess a ticket to attend a cultural event. If it were so easy, any well-adjusted deoderized bumpkin could attend. No, obtaining the ticket has become such a complex process, requiring previously unexpected levels of dexterity, hand-eye coordination, and reflexes. Not to mention riches.

Remember how all Charlie had to do was consume Willy Wonka chocolate bars to get his Golden Ticket? In today's society, poor Charlie wouldn't even score an SRO for a Florida Marlins home game.  

If you wanted to obtain event tickets back in the day--not quite as far back as Charlie's draconian ticket-acquisition methods--it was actually an advantage not to be skilled at anything at all. In fact, it was the unemployed among us who scored front-row seats to U2 and REM concerts in those pre-Internet days, because all it took to get prime tickets was the ability to stay in a line for a long period of time. It was considered a mark of pride to be able to credibly claim that you waited in line for hours, even days, for an event. Extra points were earned for documented inclement weather conditions. More credit if the police were involved in calming the crowds waiting for event tickets. And an A+ if you were interviewed on the local news, waving your tickets for the camera, detailing the new friends you made and challenges finding a bathroom. That was Reality TV at its finest.

I cannot claim to have ever endured such harsh conditions for tickets. Having been a savvy adolescent, I used my father's company letterhead to open a corporate account at Out of Town Tickets in Harvard Square, and was able to reserve tickets in advance of them going on sale. They didn't seem to care that a 14 year old was purporting to run a corporation in need of client tickets. Nor was it considered a red flag years before when a 7 year old ordered 14 Donny & Marie albums to join the Columbia Record Club. When there is money to be made, corporations are blissfully nonjudgemental.

Sadly, the wily conniving of a smart-ass kid is no longer an advantage in today's ticket-buying society. In order to procure tickets to nearly any event, you need to learn the inner-workings of a secret society of sorts. There are pre-sale codes, which seem to be reserved for the types of people who like to be on a lot of listserves. I know this because I am on two listserves and the only way I have ever heard of these pre-sales was from people posting codes from other listserves on the the listserve I am on. I think there may be entire listserves devoted to identifying listserves that provide pre-sale codes.

For those less fortunate, like me, who have not reserved tickets before the masses, there is the dreaded "Tickets Go On Sale At..." moment. In the era of pre-school applications and Ebay, I suppose we should all be accustomed to having to be ruthlessly competitive for virtually everything, or else how would we measure its value? So we clear schedules, synchronize watches, refill coffee mugs, and breathlessly wait until the 59th minute and 59th second of the previous hour have expired. That is when the frenzy begins. Do not make the mistake of attempting to purchase tickets online seconds before the appointed moment--you will get an error code and have to go back to square one. The website you are on will invariably link you to the evil Ticketmaster, whose shocking monopoly on ticket sales and brazenly exorbitant fees have managed to evade the Sherman Antitrust Act. You have very little say in selecting your seats, instead relying on the company's computer program to identify the "Best Seats Available" in a 50,000-seat venue. If you would compromise a closer row for an aisle seat, for example, you are out of luck in communicating that.

Once you select the number of seats you are seeking, the fun really begins. In order to verify that the potential ticket-buyer is not a "Bot" intent on filling all the seats in the stadium, the site requires that you pass a "security check" of mangled text so distorted that a sober mind could not possible discern the majority of the characters. In a recent attempt to secure tickets to, of all things, a Milwaukee Brewers-Colorado Rockies Spring Training game, I attempted to key in the following phrases: "PerANciL yeRTmeRy," "illoVoyA cortHers,""diSbUn SubLyvst,"and "FranKilkE penCharn." Why four phrases? Because, despite opting to "choose another" because I couldn't identify half the characters of my given phrase, I mis-keyed the next three before finally getting one right. Perhaps not coincidentally, by the time I had my code accepted, there were only second-tier seats available. After the whole ordeal, I was happy to have any seats, let alone bad ones, and appreciated the respite available during Ticketmaster's ensuing two-minute warning before my seats would be given to someone else.


While making small-talk with a Luddite co-worker, I mentioned my frustration at not being able to hand-select a block of seven seats for a baseball game I knew there were many available seats for. My coworker was not familiar with the Ticketmaster computer system, and, as it turns out, was also not a big patron of the arts. That, however, did not prevent her from suggesting I go to a Ticketmaster office and buy the tickets in person; she had once done this and was impressed with the various charts and seating plans the salesperson displayed. Once the look of horror faded from my face, I decided to give it a try. The Ticketmaster was located at a major department store, so I could always shop too. I found the office, waited for the sales person to finish flailing seating charts (that looked remarkably similar to the seating charts available online) at the person he was helping. When it was my turn, I explained what I was looking for to the sales person who, in turn, logged onto the very same Ticketmaster website that I had access to in the comfort of my own home.  

Harry Notter

Shortly after my son was born, I was in a thrift store rummaging through the book section. We are one of those families that donates a lot of our old stuff to thrift stores at the end of December for a tax write-off... but I am one of those people who immediately longs for the lost items and buys more than we donated at the very same store. One time at a yard sale to benefit my son's school, I inadvertently bought back several of the exact things we had donated for the sale.

Well, that day I was looking for children's books. This is more of a challenge than one would think if you are someone like me who begins to sneeze at the first unceremonious appearance of dust or dank. Browsing for semi-intact Golden Books at an urban Goodwill can really only be done with the Claritin handy.

As I was squelching the urge to categorize and alphabetize the haphazardly arranged tomes, I came upon a pristine hardcover copy of one of the Harry Potter books. This was a number of years ago, just as Harry Potter was beginning to be the big sensation it became, and I remembered seeing a news story with hoards of pre-teen kids--including many bespectacled boys--camped out at midnight at Barnes and Noble to get the newest HP book. Hmmm, I thought, I guess this is a book that my son will like when he is older. I envisioned myself sitting by a fireplace reading chapter after chapter of Harry Potter to my enthralled son. I pictured how the flickering of the flames would distort my shadow on the wall to make it resemble the ghostly characters that I imagined lurked in the pages of the book. The volume was $2. The price on the book jacket was $25. Wow, this was not only an investment, but a deal....

My Harry Potter prophesy proved to be as prescient as my dinosaur, Thomas the Tank Engine, and Lego predictions: Despite an absolute certainty that my son would take to each of these with an enthusiasm worthy of my hoarding of these items, my son had no interest in any of these. But, unlike my disappointment with his blase attitude toward a full train table and brightly colored vehicles bought at the most progressive of toy stores, when I finally got around to reading the first page of the Harry Potter book, I realized I had dodged a major, seven-volume, bullet.

First of all, I'll let you in on a little secret. When I purchase books for my pre-literate children, I review them for ease of reading aloud. That is code for short and sweet. I once made the mistake of buying a perfectly lovely book chronicling a Thai woman's attempt to protect her baby from the native animals. The damned book went through the exact same saga of the mother shooing away monkeys, water buffalo, gray mice, finishing each verse with the same rhyme... fine for the first two or three animals, but by the time the elephant came stomping by 35 pages later... well, you see the problem. So books get the yea or nay based on the syllable:picture ratio. The fewer words, the more pictures, the better. 

So when I picked up the Harry volume several years later and was already baffled by the first paragraph, I knew my fantasy of gathering the family for  Dickensian book-reading night was not gonna happen.  I confess to having been an English major at an East Coast college where liberal arts were deadly serious, and writing an appropriately verbose thesis on Samuel Richardson's use of the epistolary conceit in Clarissa, and an intricate deconstruction of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. However, in the years since the reality of family life, politics, fluctuating economies, and planes crashing into buildings, my interest in all things fictional has vanished. My patience for make-believe is limited to playing dolls with my daughter or being silly with my son. 

Speaking of my son, whose well-being I had in mind when purchasing the fantasy novel years ago, he seems to have inherited the practical academic approach that his parents embody. While some of his peers gravitate to the other-worldly stories of Harry and his friends, my son seeks out the very grounded  world of sports and the facts that are part of the territory. He roots for some teams that have had their share of hard knocks, similar to the unlikely heros of a Harry Potter book. Yes, even the practical, fantasy-averse suspend their disbelief from time to time. 

Honor and Honor Students: A Bumpy Road Ahead

Let me be upfront about my belief: The sole purpose of a bumper sticker is to express one’s allegiance politically (national and statewide candidates only) and athletically (ideally, a team with a winning record in the season during which the sticker was purchased). Messages whizzing by in the carpool lane do not lend themselves to nuance or ambiguity. If people need to pull over and google on their iPhones what is on the bumper in front of them, it then becomes a public safety issue. The goal of a bumper sticker is to educate, not endanger, your four-wheeled friends.

A bumper sticker has achieved its end if the person following the car has to squelch the urge either to wave at the driver in solidarity or rear-end the car in question by gunning the accelerator. Obama—not Bush. Red Sox—not Yankees. Hugging with Nuclear Arms—probably not a good idea. These moral decision trees are difficult enough to navigate at a hard stop, let alone while driving 75 miles an hour. And throw in the insistent voice of an automated GPS dominatrix and you can see how the average driver is being pushed to the limit.

When it comes to bumper sticker protocol, I’m referring to those stickers that adhere directly to a car’s back bumper (also called a rear fender). Not the transparent ones that go on the back window, which should abide by a different set of rules. Those should identify an accredited alma mater of either the car’s owner or a first-degree relative. The school must have an actual campus (not just a floor in a high-rise) and be legally permitted to confer degrees. If the person is still attending the school, they should be full-time enrollees, not part of any extension, visiting or evening program. Otherwise, the driver should be able to produce on demand (like at a red light or traffic stop) proof that someone in the family has an actual bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral degree from the school identified on the window. Of course, stickers on the back window should not depict a family of 8 with stick-figure drawings (with or without pets) in descending order of height. They should not glorify characters from Calvin and Hobbes urinating. And, it goes without saying, they should never, ever pay homage to any sort of religious figure or so-called spiritual personal belief.

The subject of the bumper sticker must be one that has been recently debated on a national Cable Television Network. The message should leave no doubt as to the driver’s leanings. Of course, if this means that some car owners may be more vulnerable to auto theft or burglary than others, then that is the price one has to pay for expressing their First Amendment Rights. One should be able to look at a pimped ride and picture the driver perhaps having cocktails with Keith Olbermann, or watching SportsCenter in Packers pajamas. The freeway is not the time to challenge fellow drivers to translate your message from a foreign tongue, or to promote a regional cause that will be meaningless to the driver in back of you. If you absolutely never take the Ford outside of your suburban cul-de-sac, then I suppose, if you must, you can get away with a sticker that touts a local restaurant or bar, for example. And then it should be because you are a frequent patron, not because the bumper sticker was free or you thought putting it on your car makes you seem edgier than you actually are.

Another ilk where there is no gray area whatsoever is the “Proud Parent of an Honor Student at… ” bumper sticker. First of all, I have never seen one of these stickers proclaim there to be “Proud Parents” or “Proud Relative Caregiver” or “Kind of Embarrassed Kin.” So these bumper stickers in and of themselves are making some sort of statement that in order for a child to be the recipient of “pride,” s/he must have a singular parent who is also a car owner/lessee. And if we start with that assumption, the constellation of students with the aforementioned auto-owning caregiver who ALSO get above-average grades is even smaller. For example, I do not believe any of my relatives have ever attended a school that had such bumper stickers available. And, truthfully, stressed teachers do not need added pressure from the administrations of those few schools who have stockpiled these stickers to produce good students. From a business model standpoint, the production of these stickers hardly seems worth it.

I have taken an informal sample of the bumpers of neighbors who I suspect may have excellent students, and I have yet to see any statement about their child’s grades affixed to their car. But more to the point, with the length of time people keep cars nowadays, such bumper stickers are rife with ethical dilemmas. First of all, Honor Student Status is only as good as the last report card. I mean, getting an “A” in one semester does nothing to mitigate a “D” the next. So by gluing onto an automobile public evidence of a parent’s presumed “pride” over an offspring’s academic accomplishment, the parent is banking on the fact that the child will continue to achieve at the same rate. If not, the parent risks being the laughingstock of his/her school district. Just as I believe people with university stickers on their windows should produce a diploma on demand, parents with these “Honor Student” stickers should be required to have a current report card in the glove compartment at all times.

I wonder about what goes on in the homes of families with these stickers. Are children discouraged from taking challenging courses so as not to risk their A’s, lest mom or dad has to trade in the Honda before the lease is up? Does the child have to work at a fast-food establishment to pay for the fees incurred by turning in the car early? Are students who fall from Honor Roll punished by having to apply Goo-Gone to the back bumper until every trace of the sticker is gone? Will the children have to start walking to school so as not to be associated with the cars touting their former glory? Alas, there are no easy answers.  

Sports Mom

There are few things more excruciating than watching your child play a competitive sports match. The discomfort is palpable in both the physical and emotional sense. In Southern California, at least, there doesn't seem to be any sport that is immune to piercing, numbing heat that remains unmitigated by sun umbrellas, canopied chairs, chilled sports drink, or attempts to watch from a shaded spot behind a tree. Then there is the stuff: gear, balls, chairs, food, water, siblings, siblings' stuff, gear, stuffed animals, spouse's forgotten jackets (which will never be used), cameras (ditto), lugged and laboriously set up at the exact point where prime viewing and possible shade might for a moment converge, hopefully when your child is in the game. The awkward small talk, the forgotten names of other parents, the squelching of urges to second-guess the coach by shrieking out some uninformed bit of strategy advice.

But the sweating, frayed nerves and social faux pas are nothing compared to the sheer terror and worry that comes with your child competing in a game. I'm not sure whether it is worse being at the game itself, or being at home waiting to hear, but the hours spent waiting for the game to conclude without major injury or humiliation is interminable. If I am at home waiting, or late to the game, I tend to not ask the score to foster the illusion that the fun and participation are all that are important. And while I do believe that, I believe it more when my child's team wins and when my child has a positive role in said victory. Watching your child play, mentally taking note of how many sincere-sounding unsolicited cheers your child gets from other parents, hoping your child will block the shot or score the goal.... it is not for the weak. In games, like soccer, that have timed periods, I will often close my eyes or stare at a distant object toward the end and just hope I can will the game to come to a quick ending before a slim lead is overcome or my weary, sweaty child collapses out of sheer exhaustion.