So in the alternate reality of Facebook tonight I actually -- for the first time -- acknowledged with someone else that I agreed with their sentiment that, indeed, "TGIF!!"
In fact, I "liked" it.
I liked it a lot.
For the first time in I can't remember, I actually spent my entire week trying to get to Friday.
So, yeah ... thank God.
I like it.
One of the few things I can control in my life is the playlist.
I can listen to what I want, when I want and in the order that I want to hear it.
I've never been one to press the "shuffle" button.
I've always wondered what the point was.
Well all I can say is that I've put my music on shuffle.
And while I can't articulate exactly why, I like my life on that setting.
As we were driving to the beach I thought about the past six years. The boys were little - more or less they still are.
Each trip we - mostly my oldest and I - go to the Broadway 16 and see the mega-huge, blowout action summer hit of the summer.
The ones with the Burger King toys.
I was thinking back on them - "Revenge Of The Sith," "Superman Returns," "Transformers," "Dark Knight," "Transformers 2."
Then I thought to this week. This part of the summer - not the beginning, not quite the end - is when whatever the summer movie was has been.
I thought back to "Iron Man 2" and how cool of a superhero movie that was. But so early too, mid-May.
"Karate Kid?" I liked it. Maybe the closest but still more a kid movie. No Burger King tie-in or 7-Eleven Slurpee cup.
So what do the boys get with their kids meals at the beach?
There it is, there the whole time in everything and everywhere.
"Eclipse!"
"Eclipse" hacky-sack." "Eclipse" miniature tote bag.
The female supermovie. Imagine that.
Eclipsing Summer Twenty Ten.
This is a big night for my son.
His 10-year-old All-Star baseball team faces elimination from the tournament – and he’s the starting pitcher.
He’s waited two years for this moment.
Last year, questionable focus – a state of mind I attribute to a lack of maturity – left him relegated to right field, despite the fact that his strong arm and pitching in the regular season was largely what got him selected to the team.
Since then, he’s worked hard. He thinks more about what he does and appreciates the fact that it’s his choice to decide if he wants to be a good player or a great player.
He’s come through for his team, leading them on the mound to a regular season championship.
The thing is, this might be his last opportunity on the mound for a public league.
I want it to end well for him – not to brag, or feel better than anyone. But to leave in a better way than he started five years ago.
This part of the country and particularly this part of South Carolina is a breeding ground for baseball players.
Just look at the two state universities who battled it out over the weekend for who gets to play for a National Championship tonight. A look at the roster of players for the Gamecocks and Clemson shows the kids who play for the national powers come from the communities we all know.
At an early, age children in this area are pulled out of “rec ball,” the league where you play for your town and compete against your friends. By the time a player has gone from 5-year-old tee ball to 7-year-old coaches pitch to 10-year-old kids pitch, he’s played against and with nearly every player in his league.
They’ve grown up together playing baseball. The community comes to the park as the park lights flicker on with an orange and deep blue sunset taking form behind them. The parents become friends (and – yes – frenemies.)
It’s what it’s supposed to be.
However …
The pursuit of excellence in baseball here is relentless.
Parents want their kids to “keep up,” talking in the stands when the boys still haven’t lost their first tooth about how great it would be for their boy to get a scholarship to play.
By the time the boys are in 3rd grade, parents pull them from the recreation leagues and place them on private teams that play in bi-weekly tournaments. The term is “travel ball” because teams sometimes travel all over the Southeast to compete against the best.
“Rec ball” has become a pejorative. “Travel ball” is a term thrown around as a status symbol.
In “travel ball,” these superbly trained baseball machines show up with their matching bat bags and helmets and cleats and play other boys they’ve never seen and might only see another three or four times a year, if that. They play, then they disperse, back to their private, 3-days-a-week practices.
After Asa’s rec championship game, the parents talked with one another while the kids wearing different colors chased each other on the bases. You don’t see that in the private leagues.
There is a benefit: You can put together the team you want, a team with parents you know you’ll like with kids you know your boy will get along with. That is unless you’re in it for reasons that might lead you to be on a team simply because you want to play “travel ball.”
Everyone is trying to keep up, whatever that means. Left in the wake of hyper-competitiveness is the recreation league that is decimated by the exodus of talent.
As much as I don’t like the trend, my son will play the private leagues next year. He simply wouldn’t enjoy playing kids who are average players. The friends he’s played with for so long will all be moving over. They have to. There’s simply no fun in playing against kids who can’t catch or throw or hit. The best we can hope for is to try to get on the same teams, which is a problem in and of itself when you’ve only got 12 spots on a team.
While I will miss the nights at the city ball park where kids play their friends like they should, I’ll simply have to make the best of the culture around me.
I’m not concerned about my kid getting a scholarship.
I just want him to leave with the same sweet taste he had when we first put his little body in a tee ball uniform and let him do what he loves.
He’s lost a few baby teeth since then. And he still has a few now.
I hope this last night feels as special as all the years leading up to this moment have.
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P.S.
For some people, the only kind chopped up chicken they'll buy is the kind that was "free-range."
The feeling is that the chicken lived a good life, not one of confined cruelty.
Which is why I guess it seems better to eat eggs from chickens who were able to stretch their legs a bit. And apparently the chickens who get to run around as they please are healthier and therefore offer us a healthier food.
But the question I have is ...
If the chicken is happy, shouldn't we in fact feel bad for killing it? It's the non-free-rangers whose lives suck. Shouldn't we be doing all we can to put those poor, miserable animals out of their misery?
Everytime I see that green-colored label, I just can't help but think that I wasted the life of a perfectly happy chicken.
