Men Only Want One Thing

Today is my grandmother's 95th birthday, so in honor of her, a birthday post.

Twenty years ago my newly widowed grandmother moved into a progressive living community near my parents. Grandma had her own two-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath home with a sun room, screened porch and even a tiny backyard. It was really pretty nice.

On my first visit to her new digs I asked Grandma how she liked it.

"I'm not crazy about it," she sighed.

"Really? Why not?"

She frowned. "The men keep asking me out."

"Grandma, you've got guys hitting on you?" I started to laugh.

"They only want one thing," she sighed.

My eyebrows jump in shock.

"Someone to do their laundry," she continued.

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

The Ice Cream Kid

Okay, she wasn't quite this small.

Abby was quite possibly the tiniest 9-year-old I've ever seen. Long brown hair hung to her waist, thick glasses obscured big brown eyes. She had Chiclets front teeth that were a little bit buck. She snuffled a lot. She walked with a bit of a limp and she ran with a lot of one.

She was a 2 pound miracle at birth.

She'd been born prematurely the team mom explained to me. Abby's as smart as a whip and her mom and dad (and step-mom) did not coddle her or condone special treatment. As cute as Abby was, they expected her to be treated exactly like everyone else.


Abby expected to be treated like everyone else too and was perceptive of people talking down to her. She may have looked like a 5-year-old (she weighed under 50 pounds) but mentally she was about 25. Unfortunately with her limp and bad eyes she just wasn't athletic.

But athletics at that age aren't all about winning, right? Our philosophy was always:

• Teach them the game
• Teach them sportsmanship
• Teach them to win

You play games to win, but part of my maturation was subjugating my need for winning to their need for learning. Abby had a huge hand in that.

It seemed like no matter how many times I positioned Abby in the batters box when the pitcher went into her motion Abby would turn to face her. That's absolutely wrong in softball and baseball. At one point in my desperation to make Abby stand in the box I laid on the ground and held her back foot in place. For 20 minutes. She stood correctly after that, but her swings were terrible and Abby began to take advantage of her natural gift: she had no strike zone. I mean the kid was three feet tall, her strike zone was barely bigger than the ball. Opposing pitchers took one look at her and sighed.

One night I heard her well-meaning grandfather yell "Scrunch up Abby!" and she did. I called timeout and  motioned her to me.

"You can't hit all scrunched up. Stand like I showed you." I commanded

Abby was the female Brick.

"I can't hit at all, but I can walk. A walk's as good as a hit." she responded dryly. (Seriously, you have no idea how weird it was to hear those words from that tiny person. Imagine Brick from The Middle with long brown hair and glasses and you have an idea of what Abby was like.)

"No it isn't," I grouched. "Hit the ball."

She struck out swinging. The last pitch was about two feet over her head.

The next practice I made an announcement that changed everything.

The Sea Swirl. Best clam fritters 
in the state.

"Everyone on the team has at least one hit," I said, "except Abby." I paused and looked at them. They all gazed at Abby sympathetically (another way little girls are better than little boys). "So this is what's going to happen. When Abby gets her first hit of the season, the whole team is going out for ice cream. To Sea Swirl." Sea Swirl is the local clam shack/soft serve ice cream place. A summer institution.

Fourteen little girls cheered. One stared at me coldly. Abby knew I'd painted her into a corner: now she had to hit.

She became known as The Ice Cream Kid. Her teammates would line up behind the chain-link fence of the dugout, little fingers grasping the metal, jumping up and down screaming for her to get a hit. They would spend every other at bat in the dugout braiding each other's hair or drawing in the dirt, but when Abby was up, so were they.

Abby hated me. A walk was no longer nearly as good as a hit.

Liz, the team mom, told me how much she liked the ice cream kid idea and how enthusiastic Kate and Emily were. Then she told me that she was sure Abby would have been a much better athlete if the oxygen treatment she received as a preemie hadn't blinded her left eye.

Hold the fucking phone.

"Abby is blind in her left eye?" I asked genuinely stunned.

"Daisy (Abby's mom) didn't tell you that?"

I scooped my jaw off the ground.

"No. No she didn't. You'd think blindness might be something you told a coach!" I was livid. No wonder she kept squaring up to the pitcher. The left eye was her lead eye, she couldn't see the fucking ball coming until it appeared in her right eye's vision. No "special treatment" was one thing, putting her in danger was quite another.

I grabbed Marc by the collar and told him what Liz told me. His jaw dropped too. We approached Abby.

"Abby," I asked calmly, "can you see out of your left eye?"

She looked at me like I was an idiot.

"No."

I marched her into the left batter's box. Marc lobbed a ball in and Abby smacked it. She whipped around and looked at me with genuine amazement. The anger I'd felt moment earlier vanished. The chip on Abby's shoulder disappeared.

The next game Abby hustled into the left batter's box as fast as her limp would take her. She stood tall in the box (well, tall for her) and flicked her wrists in anticipation of the pitch. In it came, Abby took her cut and connected. The dugout went wild. The stands went nuts (both sides; it's a small town, everyone knew her).


"RUN!" I screamed, my voice lost in the shrieking cacophony of her teammates. Out of the corner of my eye I saw all 6'7" of Marc hopping up and down.

Abby gamboled down the line as fast as she could. The catcher bounded in front of the plate to pick up the ball (I didn't say she hit it far). Bless her little heart, the catcher sailed the ball into right field. Katelyn, who was coaching first, was beside herself and signaled with both arms (and legs) for Abby to take second. Without hesitation she rounded first and motored towards the second. Well, motoring like Yugo moving up a mountain, but she was trying.

The right fielder corralled the ball and launched a throw in the general vicinity of second base. Abby was safe, both feet rooted on the on the dusty white lump.

I'm not sure I've ever been genuinely happier. I can still see the setting sun glinting off Abby's glasses, her goofy smile, the green grass, the mellowing sky. I turned to our stands behind me and her mom was crying (not boohooing, but you moms know what I mean). The girls started chanting "Sea SWIRL, Sea SWIRL!"

Yeah, I know: she reached on an error. I don't care and I'd punch you if you ever told her it wasn't a hit.

Modern Friendly

The Internet killed pen pals.

I read a listicle of things the Internet killed or is in the process of killing, one of them being pen pals. I had a pen pal when I was a kid, Giacomo from Milano who lived on the Via Venezia. He was assigned to me and we had nothing in common. The letters were always very brief and written on airmail paper which made tracing paper seem thick. After two years of correspondence all I can tell you about Giacomo was that he liked Formula One racing.

Now I have friends of a sort around the world. Yes, I will call them friends even though I'll probably never meet them. Even though in several instances I don't even know their real names. They're certainly better known to me than Giacomo. If pen pals were considered "normal" why aren't the people you correspond with online?

I equate the people I know online to people I know who work in the same building. Over time you get to know them from elevator rides, encounters at the coffee lounge and riding the same train into the city. They're not the people who come to dinner or help you move, but you still know them, their lives, their habits and you're better for it.

Floyd & Sam? I think so.

Beware of Bunny Boilers

Of course there are the people you're not friendly with: the busy bodies, the ones who talk too loud, the ones with the political views that make your skin crawl, the chronically angry. The bunny boilers. Invariably there are nuts that you can't help but like in a weird way--sort of like the street performers who block you on the sidewalk: nuisances but they'd leave a hole in your day if they weren't there.

At my old job, in which I was horribly underutilized, my modern friends helped pass the time. Juls from Chicago reminded me so much of my little sister that I developed a sibling rapport with her (which is a nice way of saying you drive me crazy, Juls, and if at all possible I'd noogie you a bald spot if you beat me again).

Then there's "Janie" (I'll protect your anonymity because God knows the bunny boiler would love to know it and then use it repeatedly). Our friendship defies classification, it's a true "modern friendly" relationship. Part work-wife, part big sister, part buddy, I'm not sure it could exist between a man and a woman out in the real world. But in the snow-globe-like reality of the internet it flourishes.

There's also my British friend, Coff, who is responsible for me writing this blog. She's our international woman of mystery who proves you can know a whole lot about a person without really knowing a thing.

A lot of people inhabit similar snow-globe-like realities whether through online gaming, chat rooms or message boards (does anyone still use message boards?) and they don't allow that world to collide with the one their physical bodies inhabit. I've decided the hell with that. I may couch it in vague terms like "my friend Janie..." but if you are one of my modern friends my family, friends and coworkers have heard something about you. And of course Tea knows you all. Sadly, even the bunny boiler.