Thursday, August 4, 2011

BAD HAIRCUT . . . AND OTHER STORIES

Alright, I’ll admit that Tom Perrotta used that title first for an engaging collection of short stories (the story “Thirteen” is a true classic of adolescence awakening). I hope he doesn’t mind my borrowing it as a heading for this blog post. It seems to be a good catch-all for what follows.

MOO
So, a couple of days ago I took our Springer Spaniel in for grooming. She got the worst haircut ever: she came home looking like a Holstein calf! In fact, the next morning when my wife was out walking her, a guy in a pickup truck slowed down and shouted out: “Hey, nice cow!” My wife called back: “Hey, she’s a dog!” The man revved his engine and said: “I was talking to the dog.” Ha-ha!

WALKOFF
Okay, that story was only partly true (the bit about the bad haircut). But this is all true: for the second time this baseball season, I had drop in my lap a ticket for a great seat at Fenway Park—this time almost directly behind homeplate, about 15 rows deep. The price on the ticket was $94: my friend Joe, who invited me to accompany him to the game, got a pair as a “perk” for something or other, and we ended up getting far more than face value out of them. The game was delayed almost an hour-and-a-half because of a passing thunderstorm, but it was well worth the wait and the resulting late night as the Red Sox walked off with a win over the Cleveland Indians when pinch-runner Jarrod Saltalammachia slid in headfirst to score on a close play at the plate after Jacoby Ellsbury lined a single into center field in the bottom on the ninth inning. Exciting! Joe summed up the evening nicely in an email the next day: “I’ll not soon forget the cheese steak, the usher’s bench wipe, the rain delay, the high-quality brews, the thrilling outcome, the packed Green Line car, and the last Red Line car back home. Last night was an eleven!!!”

THE LAST OF THE MOHEGANS
One more “story” that warrants telling involves the less-than-24-hour visit to Block Island, RI that my wife and I enjoyed over the weekend. We strapped our bikes onto the back of the Batmobile then ferried over from Pt. Judith for an overnight visit with my wife’s sister and her husband and their three daughters, who had rented a place with a breathtaking outlook on the Mohegan Bluffs. The weather was perfect—mid-80s—and we savored the whirlwind getaway. As we were ferrying back to the mainland, we caught sight of my sister-in-law running along the jetty waving to us. Was she a Siren attempting to lure us to our doom on the rocks? Or was she simply making sure that we left her and her family to enjoy, without visitors, their final day on that glorious spot?

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