Back when we were living in Michigan, Pops worked for Ford Motor Company, Moms was aschoolin’, Commodore 128s were still viable alternatives for PCs, and my brother and I were skateboarding fools. See-store had either already headed off to Central Michigan University, was out on a date with “way too much make-up on for a young lady” or this episode is just stretching too far back into the past for my beleagured mind to recall.
A normal day for me then would likely have had as its foundation several hours of education at Our Lady of Good Counsel in Plymouth, followed by a few diversionary hours outside where I would try my damndest to tag along with the brother, my tiny legs cranking out short inefficient pumps along the concrete – the skateboard wobbling out of control in its effort to buck me. Often I would be admonished and sent home — in which case I would make an effort to break out the bat and ball and entertain myself until dinner time by tossing that ball up and smacking it out into the vast park that rolled from our backyard. If this refused to carry enough diversionary power to last until dinner, I might have grabbed the mitt and a tennis ball, waltzed over to the side of the house and whipped that ball against the brick wall a few times.
I’d become rather good at using the sidewalk that ran about two feet from the side of the house as a ricochet if I got tired of fielding grounders. Just fire that ball down at an angle and watch the physics in action as it smacked up and against the side of the house, it’s trajectory now an angle akin to a pop fly. I’d plant myself under these “towering drives” lost in a make-believe game where I became Chet Lemon, making yet another amazing grab for the Detroit Tigers. Many of those pop flies wound up landing on the neighbor’s roof, the result of a young boy’s overzealous throw. After flying overhead and disappearing over that line in the sky, I heard it bouncing along and tempting fate with its hops. Sometimes it found a temporary home in the eavestroughs way up high where I couldn’t reach and I’d have to go back into the garage and take a whiff of those brand new dunlops.. I’d simulate entire games out there under the sun, morphing into my favorite ballplayers, exhorting myself to win yet another World Series, and earn that gold glove as Alan Trammell, and to hell with Tony Fernandez, who in reality always seemed to be the better fielder – but couldn’t catch my adulation like ole number 3.
By this time in the day, Dad would have pulled up, and usually came by rifling through the mail, his big sunglasses covering his eyes, a big goofy grin on his face and call out, “Hey Kevin,” or “Kevin me-boy” or something in a sing-songy voice. “Watcha doing?”
“Playing baseball.” Dad would continue to try to illicit a response with follow up questions, “How was your day?” and that sorta thing, but like a young Ari Fleischer I would manage to deflect and avoid, focusing instead on the diving stab I would have to make in order to keep that runner at third. Eventually Dad would finish sorting the mail and head inside.
Sometimes Dad just went straight inside. That usually meant it was a long day at work…But I’m glad now that more often than not he tried to say something to that crazy son of his who was fascinated by a ball and a brick wall.
It wasn’t long after that that Moms would call me in to wash up for supper in the middle of one of these vitally important games and how could you interrupt me and don’t you realize we’re playing for the pennant here?!. I’d walk in through the garage, throwing my mitt down, head inside and take a left (I think) towards the bathroom where I’d wash up and join the rest of the family in the kitchen for dinner. (Oh the stories the dinner table, or backless benches could tell if they could only find their voice.) Following dinner it was time to do homework and no you can’t use the computer until you finish your homework. Using the computer usually meant fighting my brother over who used it last and it’s my turn and you’re such a jerk. Then I’d cry and get to use the computer. Then brother would call me a name and get in more trouble.
If see-store was home she’d just sigh heavily and roll her eyes around so much you’d think she was having an epileptic fit.
Well – I can’t remember the exact occurrences of the day in question — but the odds are that one or more of the above happened. What I do remember is Mark and I hovering over the object in question, with Dad looking over our shoulders, asking us what we thought about it.
“What is it?” I asked.
approx: “What do you think it is?” He replied.
“It looks like a fishing pole.” Indeed, when it was firmer and you held it out at arms length in its younger days, it sorta kinda but not really resembled a fishing pole.
“I think it looks like brains!” Mark snickered. “It’s cool, can I have it?” And thus was the transfer completed.
Now, I may have this all wrong. As, for one thing – it is highly unlikely that this object ever made it out of Michigan and all the way down to Georgia when 4/5ths of our family made the journey — leaving see-store behind to ferment in her newly found hippiedom of Ann Arbor, Michigan. But wound up down here it did, in the hands of Willishrinx, who passed along the, uh, object when he cleaned house before the move to Alaska. Now it lays in the back of the ship, eyeing me over, wondering what its fate will be…
How do you remember it, Willi?
Okay, time for the second object:
oh , it was definitely a fishing pole.
good job writing. It was a left.