Especially if you are a Pack Rat such as myself.
Gina’s post about her beloved Cubs going to the World Series triggered memories of those exciting years in the early 90s when the Braves went from worst to first.
John and I had been married a few years, were childless and lived 10 minutes from Atlanta Fulton County Stadium.
I commented to Gina that I should have one of those early Braves’ World Series tickets somewhere.
Here’s what I found in my bedside table. Not a World Series ticket, this was for a playoff game against the Pirates. They lost this game but Game 7 was one of the all time great Brave finishes with Francisco Cabrera’s two out bottom of the ninth hit scoring David Justice and Sid Bream.
Hence, the Braves made it to the 1992 Series against the Toronto Blue Jays.
Dad came up for a game. The one clear memory I have of that night was looking down and thinking something is not right with the maple leaf on the Canadian flag.
But why wasn’t the World Series ticket crammed in the back of the drawer to my bedside table?
You see Gina, World Series tickets are big and very fancy. Just the kind of sentimental keepsake a reformed Pack Rat such as myself couldn’t bear to throw away.
Then I remembered.
Upon entering the stadium in the crush of folks, I went to the bathroom. (Some women tend toward paranoid at the notion of being trapped in the middle of a long row of seats at important sporting events and having to excuse themselves over and over to the bathroom.)
I went to the bathroom, waited in a very long line of women, took care of business, washed my hands, came out, met dad and up we went. Arriving at our section in the upper deck, we pulled out our tickets.
Alas I had no ticket.
Blood rapidly drained from my face through my throat — pooled in my stomach — and I became very sicky.
My dad had driven seven hours. We stood inches away from our seats. And I had lost any proof that Seat 113, Row 14, Aisle 312 was my very own.
No one in the universe felt worse than I did at this moment — with the possible exception of the person who attached the Canadian flag to the pole upside down.
No memory remains how we talked our way to our row.
Once seated, I constantly checked the entrance to our section for a character clad in dark leather wearing a grimy, bent-to-hell New York Yankees cap. The specter who was sure to march up to our row, motion at me saying, “Hey, missy get your @** out of my seat.” Then Braves’ Security would arrive to escort dad and I in the walk of shame back down the ramp to probable arrest.
I didn’t relax till the seventh inning. If that.
Thankfully nobody in the crowd coursing through the cement ramps of Fulton County Stadium found a trampled ticket face down in a sticky pool of Budweiser.
And messed with my World Series memory.
So hold on to those tickets all ye Cubs and Indians. And enjoy the show.
The Lord has his eye on the sparrow —
and those of us scattered-of-mind at the most inopportune times.
Lost tickets anyone?
“Things are great . . . with an asterisk.”
After first seeing the Facebook announcement for my 35th High School Reunion, I looked at it. Then I looked at it again.
The passage of 35 years was so hard to conceive and my arithmetic so weak, I took out paper and pen and subtracted 1981 from 2016.
Gag me . . . it had been 35 years.
I vowed to lose 5 pounds. Take every yoga class for the next four months. Pick out a dress. Face lift. Butt lift. Skin-on-my-legs-especially-the-skin-above-my-knees lift.
Months passed and it was two weeks till the reunion. I weighed about the same. I’d made it to three yoga classes the month of August. Nothing had been surgically lifted, so I packed some make-up, a pair of Spanx and rubbed self-tanner on my legs. Though I did think it the perfect excuse to get a facial.
Reunion photo credit to Ricky Silva. Can you find me?
Random thoughts on attending your 35th High School Reunion.
— Commit to going. Don’t think about it. No one ever gives birth or adopts children, signs up for a marathon or goes to a class reunion if they ruminate on it.
— Note to the venue. For the love of Mike, when most party-goers are over 50 — dim the lights on the dance floor.
— Try on the dress you decide to wear before the night of the party. I bought a dress last spring and never once had it on again until the night of the reunion. Whatever mojo I felt in the dressing room wasn’t there reunion night. Didn’t like it. At all. Thankfully, I did bring another dress. But logic says to try the dress on before leaving your closet in the rear view mirror six hours down the road.
— To those who went to high school in Florida and haven’t lived there in a while. HAVE A BACKUP PLAN FOR YOUR HAIR. I completely forgot about the Florida humidity. It was raining as well. My hair went up in a coated rubber band.
— Your mother can show up at the party before you, talk to people, and you laugh about it. If my mother would have shown up to a high school party 35 years prior, I’d have dropped out of Winter Park and enrolled at Edgewater under an alias.
My 83-year-old mother dropped by the party before I arrived. (She was eating in the adjoining restaurant.) She walked in and started talking to all my high school friends, and some of their children. When I arrived my friend Ann said, “Did you know your mother was here?” She laughed saying, “I looked up and thought that’s Jamie’s mother . . . this is wild.”
This photo is Facebook credited to Ann who is in the middle of this pic. Ann who talked with my party-crashing mom. (I think her husband must have had the phone.)
High School Reunions are wild in a Twilight Zone sort of way.
Facebook is for cowards. Nothing can substitute the authenticity found in a face-to-face conversation after 35 years.
I heard a great phrase today. Out having breakfast in Madison, we were approached by an acquaintance we hadn’t seen in a while. He asked the standard “How are things?”
We gave the standard reply, “Things are great.”
To which he said with a smile, “Things are great with us too . . . with an asterisk.”
By the time you’re heading to your 35th High School Reunion, everybody can say, “Life is great . . . with an asterisk.”
Asterisks don’t discriminate. They are equal opportunity offenders in the form of losing loved ones, of divorce or divorces, children heartbreak. Financial struggles or collapse. Job traumas. Battling illness as if our lives depended on it. And the universal of challenge of experiencing our young selves — becoming not so young at all.
We’ve have lost the urge to play the comparison game to feel better about ourselves. If I asked you what you’ve been doing the last 35 years, I was truly interested in finding out your journey. Not to boast on my superstar decades headlining as wife, mother — and writing a blog.
On Facebook you get a bunch of amazing photos. Ones people post after they deleted the first fifteen they took.
It is a great way to keep up but,
With Facebook you can’t throw your arms about somebody’s neck in a squeeze or learn how fun life can be with a sugar monkey. Or giggle with friends you giggled with 35 years ago.
Thanks to Michelle for this snapshot.
So as Nike said back in the day,
Just do it and go to that reunion.
What’s to lose? It was quick. Just a few hours and then done.
Just like high school.
Just like the last 35 years.
Thoughts?
The first rule of blogging is immediacy. Or is it frequent posting? Then there’s good content.
Lately, I haven’t done much of anything with my blog. So I’m going to invoke the Erma Bombeck Rule.
To be fair, this is my personal Erma Bombeck Rule. One that resulted from something I heard she said.
Later in her writing career when asked if she made notes of possible column ideas while on an extended trip with her husband, she replied no. Whatever was interesting enough to write about would be there — without notes — when she got home.
That idea intrigues me. Does it work with blogging? So many posts never get posted if I’m not able to write immediately.
It seems old news.
Who am I kidding? Old news?
That applies to CNN not my blog.
So I’m invoking Jamie Miles’ Erma Bombeck Rule on future blog posts for a while. Especially, since my WIP takes the majority of my writing time these days.
Things that happened yesterday, last month or last year — events that I wanted to write about and should have blogged about — I’m going to post about in an untimely manner.
It will be interesting to see the stuff that stuck with me without referring to notes to jar my memory.
First up . . . my 35th High School Reunion last August, which I should have written about last August.
Or that’s what I used to think.
