Tag: stream-of-consciousness

family

Here’s the wind-up..

Sally2 Comments

And the pitch!

I encouraged my kids to play either of two sports: swimming or soccer. They’re both fairly easy to understand.

In swimming the person who touches the wall first wins (assuming they swam the proper stroke legally).

In soccer, one team is heading toward one goal, the other toward the other. Kick the ball in the correct goal and your team scores a point. (Of course there are other rules, but that’s the general idea.)

Baseball, on the other hand, is not so easy.

I grew up on baseball, living in Cooperstown (home of the Baseball Hall of Fame and alleged birthplace of the game) and having a father who made annual pilgrimages to Fenway Park in Boston. I can still name Red Sox players from those days: Carl Yastrzemski, Tony Conigliaro, Rico Petrocelli, Carlton Fisk.

After my father died, a man told me the story of how he first met my father — they were both driving to a spot outside town (the dump) where they could pick up WBZ to listen to the Red Sox game in the car. When Keith realized that my father was listening to the same game, he tapped on the car window, introduced himself, and thereafter they listened together and became friends with the common bond of Red Sox baseball.

But baseball is hard to understand. Just ask a tee-ball coach. They’re the ones trying to explain the hitting, running around the bases, fielding, tagging the runner, etc. etc etc.

I’ve watched the little faces of the players go blank as the coach loses them in his explanation.

I’ve watched kids run around the bases in the wrong direction because the coach neglected to mention that requirement.

I’ve watched players making dandelion crowns in the outfield because they don’t understand that they are still playing the game even though they feel like they are just standing around far from where the game is actually taking place.

Yep. Baseball fails to hold the attention of young people.

They won’t understand for a decade that the pitcher (when they’ve moved beyond tee-ball and actually have a pitcher) and the batter are really two chess players trying to outthink and thereby outplay the other.

No – a lot of them will be swimming or playing soccer because their mom was bored with baseball.

Still, I love watching that moment when the pitcher is leaning in, resting his hand with the ball on his back, studying the batter, watching the signals the catcher is giving him, deciding in a moment which pitch to throw. Meanwhile the batter is mentally running through the pitches he has seen the pitcher throw and deciding how he will respond to each one.

Yeah, I love that moment.

But, honestly, I love watching the hand hit the touchpad in pool even more.

This is my response to Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciouness Saturday prompt: pitch

Life · Writing

Decision Making

Sally8 Comments

My youngest daughter is faced with a challenging decision. She and her current roommate are moving into a new apartment. It’s two bedroom, two bath, but one of the bedrooms has a bath attached while the other bedroom would use the common bathroom.

“The one with the private bath is clearly the better one,” she told me. “How do we choose who gets it?”

Draw straws? Flip a coin?

One of her sisters suggested they each bid on the room. How much more would they be willing to pay for the room with the private bath? Later, though, she said that would kill their friendship. Both girls would feel resentful — one for the privacy, the other for the money.

I asked dilemma-daughter again the other day. “Did you figure it out?”

“No,” she said sadly. “This is so hard!”

And yet I think we both know that if this is the hardest decision she has to make in her life, her life will have been pretty easy.

It’s less about making the right decision, and more about being able to sit with whatever decision is made. She will have another hard decision next week, next month, next year. Another opportunity to move on and not second-guess.

I think that’s called living.

This is my post for Stream of Consciousness Saturday, where the prompt was “Straw.”

It’s been a while since I’ve participated in this weekly prompt, but I’m trying to get those creative juices flowing again.

Blather

Weird

Sally5 Comments

The Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS) prompt for today is “i before e.”

Earlier today, I had had a conversation with someone who remarked how he still remembered and leaned on that rule.

“Kind of weird,” I said.

He didn’t get it.

Weird is such a great word — and it’s weird that it doesn’t follow the rule, even when the rhyme is completed — “or when sounded ay as in neighbor and weigh.” We don’t pronounce it wayrd. Weird.

I looked the rule up to make sure I was saying it right. There is funny stuff out in internetland.

How about this one: “I before E unless you leisurely deceive eight overweight heirs to forfeit their sovereign conceits.”

Weird, right?

Ooh, ooh! Here’s another: “I before E except when your foreign neighbors Keith and Heidi receive eight counterfeit beigh sleighs from feisty caffeinated weightlifters. Weird.”

I had to look up the word beigh: a provincial governor in the Ottoman empire. I suppose an alternate spelling to Bey.

Or maybe they meant beige.

Or maybe I misread it — I am, after all, trying to do stream-of-consciousness writing, not look-up-funny-things-and-copy-them writing.

Good golly, there are a lot of them. They refer to overweight reindeer and beige sleighs involved in heists.

I kind of stream-of-consciously wrote this last night and meant to post it, but I fell asleep.

Weird.