DON’T STRIKE OUT!!

My dad’s dad, who we his grandkids affectionately called “Grandpa,” lived with our family from before I was born until he passed away during my 8^th grade year.  In the 13 years that Grandpa and I spent getting to know each other, I found out the man harbored more than just a few pet peeves.  Some of his favorites were:

• Jackasses who can’t find their ass with their own two hands
• “Those goddamn SOB’s” (this was applied generously to a lot of people)
• Forgetting to take trash out on trash day
• Ronald Reagan
• Kids who scream bloody murder when no one is actually being murdered
• Striking out (specifically in baseball, but presumably in life too)

Grandpa introduced my brother, Andrew, and me to baseball when we were young, and was then punished by having to serve as our baseball chauffeur for the entirety of our little league careers.  Looking back, I can only guess that as a WWII survivor grandpa was able to endure things normal citizens shouldn’t have to suffer.  He sat dutifully through every single game Andrew and I played, even though we played on separate teams.

Grandpa always sat on the bleachers right behind home plate.  When one of us was up to bat, he would sometimes clamber up to the chain link fence to offer some helpful advice:

“You got two strikes on you!  DON’T STRIKE OUT!!” 

In Grandpa’s estimation, a strike out was a forgivable offense if you at least stuck your bat out and attempted to make contact with the ball.  But there was NOTHING worse than striking out looking. It was inexcusable to let the final pitch pass you by without at least taking a hack at it.

Despite his best intentions to spur me onto greatness, my nerves as a 9 year old often crumbled on that final pitch, and I found myself trudging back towards the dugout, head down, baseball bat dragging behind me, hoping grandpa would just do us both a favor and leave me at the ball field until I could redeem myself the following weekend. 

Thankfully Grandpa was a better grandparent than I was a baseball player, and win or lose he never failed to treat Andrew and I to Slurpees from 7-11.  Where he also never failed to pick up a 16oz can of Miller High Life for himself.  Reflecting on those 7-11 stops, I think they were his way of congratulating us in victory and commiserating with us in defeat, where those Slurpees were the closest substitute he could offer us to his own brown-bagged beverage.  It was a moment of grandfatherly tenderness in which he knew that we needed a drink.  And so did he.

I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to say enough about how much Grandpa loved his grandkids (even if some of us couldn’t find our asses with our two hands).  But when I look back on my childhood, those little league days with Andrew and Grandpa represent some of the happiest days of my youth.  Even if I did have stomach ulcers for most of those days.

Grandpa in his element.

Baseball card from my first season of T-ball.

Reverse side of card.  Grandpa was furious that I said I wanted to be a catcher.

Left Out

I always got left places as a kid.  At church, the mall, the beach…  Pretty much anywhere.  And it’s not that my family doesn’t love me (I think), but it's more a natural consequence of being caught in the middle of 7 kids: you’re bound to get forgotten from time to time, maybe even routinely.  But who’s keeping track, really?  Certainly not this "well-rounded" middle child.

In the earliest part of my childhood, my parents shuttled their children around in a white 1970's VW microbus.  It was always a mad dash to get everyone into the van and out of the driveway to make it somewhere on time.  Which we almost never executed successfully (making it anywhere on time).

One quick caveat:  I am not sure if my parents were unconvinced of the merit of child safety seats, or if this was simply the era before child safety seats became mandatory and ubiquitous.  Regardless, my parents used to sit me atop a brown, plastic box to soak up the slack in the seat belt around my small waist.  [My adult self (pre-kids) consequently assumed that rear-facing car seats were unnecessary and were for pussies. As a parent, I am zealot for car seats.]

Anyways, it was a Sunday morning when--in the chaos of everyone frantically piling into the van for church--I was forgotten from the seating frenzy and elected to ride on the bumper.  To this day, I remember the buildup very clearly:  I looked into the van, saw that my brown booster seat was missing, and stoically resigned myself to the obvious fact that I would have to ride to church on the bumper.  Problem was, the rest of my family was too busy packing bodies into the car to notice 2-yr old me climbing into position on the rear bumper.

 
You should be asking “what the hell did you hold onto??”  Great question.  The back door of a VW microbus does not offer much of a handhold, but rather a small lip protruding below the keyhole, perhaps big enough to support a single adult finger or maybe 2 small fingers... say, of a 2 yr old.  And that’s what I held onto.  For dear life.  Pictured below is an actual VW Microbus latch assembly for reference.

The rest of the story is sort of a blur to me.  Most likely because I was SCARED SHITLESS, CLINGING FOR DEAR LIFE TO A TINY LATCH ON THE BACK OF A VAN THAT WAS DRIVING DOWN A MAJOR THOROUGHFARE.  I have pieced together the remaining details with help from my parents and sisters.  Supposedly, after driving some distance down the busy road, one of my sisters finally noticed my absence and raised the alarm.  At this point, my dad, who was navigating the van, looked in the rearview mirror and saw a giant pair of eyes peeking in just above the rim of the rear window.  My mom then sprang into action and pulled me into the car.  And somehow I survived the rest of my childhood and am here today to laugh about it.

If my 2 year old memory was correct, we didn’t make it much more than 1/10 of a mile down the road before I was discovered.  However, as most good stories have a tendency to grow and swell over time, it is sometimes told that I survived on that bumper for a full 2 hours during hurricane conditions!  One fact that isn’t debated at all among my family, and is also my favorite detail of the whole ordeal: no one else on the road that day tried to honk or wave or otherwise make any kind of attempt to alert my parents that a child was surfing the rear bumper.  Seriously.

Rare photo-op of the family (plus a few randoms) in front of the VW Microbus... me staring at my toes was not that rare.

 

VW Microbus, "au naturel."

 

Not sure what's more concerning: my shorts or the missing booster seat.