Sporting Goods

Baseball games at our minor league team's stadium are an opportunity for many wonderful things.  They have games you can play for a dollar or more and "win" team paraphernalia.  Cotton candy, hot dogs, cheeseburgers, soft drinks.  Not to mention the gift shop.  The campaign begins almost as soon as we get into the ballpark.

Ian, with his superior powers of observation and planning, picked up on the fact that, with the purchase of our four tickets, we were entitled to what amounts to about $20 worth of "food" from the concession stand (at concession-stand prices).  So suddenly I was off to procure a voucher from the ticket desk, and then load up two cartons of the best imaginable meal:  four hot dogs, four small bags of potato chips and four sodas.  In addition to that, I had already gotten a cheeseburger for Ian, but, like the hot dogs, I performed a ritual purge of the bun, with all of its detestable gluten, before giving it to him.  But in the case of the cheeseburger, I didn't do a perfect job.  Some of the inside of the top bun had clung to the cheese-like substance on the burger, and this was not lost on Daniel.  How come Ian got a bun and he didn't?

Well, Ian didn't get a bun; there was just a small clump of bun that was left on the cheese.

Daniel wanted to know if he could have  some of it.

Unfortunately, the gift shop, or "pro shop," closes after everything else in the stadium.  Daniel set to work immediately,  Madeleine quickly found a wonderfully tacky little ring, made of rubber, with blue, red, and other-colored flashing lights, which subsequently flashed all the way home, making my inner neurotic constantly feel like the police were right behind me for some lane-switching-without-signalling kind of crime-against-humanity.  The ring was twenty-five cents; I ushered young Madeleine quickly to the register, eager to close the deal, and also give Daniel the misleading impression that we were about to leave.

Daniel found one of those awful giant foam hands, emblazoned with our team's logo, with the index finger pointing up to indicate that our team was "Number 1," in spite of the fact that they had just actually lost to a team from Bowie, Maryland, of all non-metropolises, (I hadn't heard of Bowie before...  Jim Bowie?  David Bowie? ) , and had lost by a score of 9 to 2.  Daniel was disappointed that Ian didn't get his own our-team-is-numba-one foam hands, because he had hoped to have giant-foam-finger-poking fights with Ian all the way to the car, and then all the way home.

But Ian had other ideas.  Ian proposed that I give him a dollar, rather than squander funds on some frivolous trinket from a baseball team gift shop.  Ian is part Scottish.  So am I.  To the vast kiltless masses, this might sound bizarre, but I think we both knew a good deal when we saw it.

When we got outside, Daniel was not pleased to learn that Ian was getting money.  But Ian tried to explain the deal to him, and he framed it all in its accurate context brilliantly:

"Well, I think saving up is pretty-much just for me.  I don't think Daniel would like it."

Sometimes a nine-year-old knows the world around him better than the world knows itself.

(August 8, 2013)