Missing: Jock

Miss Sally ensures that Greg’s soccer gear is ready for practices and games the night before. This involves washing clothes and knowing where they should be found and where they will be found. Because of the complexity of this, I am usually not involved in the process outside of making sure he has the bag with him when we leave the house. Thursday morning I left early and there was a small miscommunication, so Greg’s soccer bag was not ready.  Greg was told to find own things (which I assume Miss Sally listed in alphabetical order) and put them in his bag. Then they were out the door. Later than evening, as he was putting his clothes on, it was hard not to notice the bright red game socks he was wearing and that they were not the plain old black ones. There was no time to change and so he got to run around for 90 minutes in the glory of looking different from the other boys.

When Miss Sally shared this story with me, I said that she would have hated me as a kid. Game days around our house were a combination of realizing there was a game at 5:00pm and not 6:30pm, wearing clothes that had just been pulled from the washer and spending a hectic 10 minutes trying to find an unfindable jock and cup.  One game afternoon, I was running through the house in a wet jersey seeking out my cup and jock.  It is quite possible that where ever that jock was lost 30 years ago, it is still there.

I did find my cup, but I still didn't have the jock with the pocket that the cup slides into. So I just shoved the cup in my underwear and we were out the door.

During most games, much of my time was spent on the bench. And when I was not on the bench or standing in left field, I was striking out, so there was very little chance of me having to do any running which might be uncomfortable with a cup up against my one strike and two balls.

But this day was different. For one, I started the game. I assume there were only six kids that showed up that day. While out in the field, I had the ball hit in my direction several times and after each interaction, I had to try and shove the cup back into position. It must have been pretty noticeable because my mom came down from the bleachers and told me to stop playing with myself in the field.

When my time came to bat, I hit the ball and got on first! The cup stayed in position. The next guy up whacked the ball and I went running to second. The cup decided to make a break for it and started to come out of my underwear and slide down my pant leg. I kept running to third. The cup got stuck by the elastic in my pant leg.  It looked like I had a third knee on my shin. I tried to pull it up and I was also trying to act nonchalant as if I was just dusting off my third knee, but it was really wedged in there and it might have looked like I was the one giving the signals to the batter to bunt. The third base coach asked me what I was doing and I told him my cup fell out. Fortunately he did not call for a time out to fix the issue and the inning ended with me on third base.

I told the head coach I did not have a jock and just had shoved the cup in my underwear.  I don’t think he laughed, but he did pull me from the game.

Here's to hoping that our kids inherit Miss Sally’s organizational skills. 

Writing is Hard

Writing is hard. It’s hard because there are many things I would rather do than write.

A list of things I would rather do than write:

Surf the web.

Play video games.

Look at porn.

Find some other colloquialism for “surf the web.”

But I love to write. I really do. It’s like the words make themselves up in between the time I start to think of them and when my fingers press the keys.

I once tried to “write” using voice recognition software. It was horrible. My voice doesn’t seem to have the same talent as my fingers. My voice is in the fourth grade. It doesn’t have a decent vocabulary. My problem is that I can’t think and talk at the same time. I think that’s why I cannot remember people’s names. I’m talking to fill in the awkward gaps of silence.

When I write, or rather type, there is no pause. The words seem to trickle out my fingers faster than my mind can follow. There’s just enough time for me to process and then type.

Honestly, I didn’t know this is what I would be writing about right now. I thought that I would be writing about fear and loneliness. But instead I’m actually talking about words per minute and voice recognition software and how my fingers magically can make words on a screen better than my own voice.

Back on topic… writing.

The first rule of writing is to not write about writing.

The second rule of writing is that if you are going to talk about writing, you’d better make it pretty fucking interesting.

I don’t write anymore. That’s pretty damn sad.

I don’t write anymore because it’s too hard or rather that not writing is too easy. I spend a lot of time on Twitter writing very simple 140 character phrases. That’s easy. It’s easy to be Fake Dispatch. It’s harder to be Holy Juan. On top of that, it’s especially hard to be Doug. No one wants to be Doug.

Can I tell you how great it is to write? What it feels like to put words on paper and know that I just need to wrap this up and hit publish for you to read them? It’s awesome.  But for some reason, I don’t do this as much.  I used to think it was because I ran out of stories. I think my stories ran out some time in 2007.

So, I’m going to wrap this up. If you are reading this, it is because you are a dedicated fan. I haven’t published anything worth reading in months and if you are still hanging on to my last word, thanks. Thanks, because now this is my new last word.

I’m hoping there will be more new last words.