Tales of a Friday evening

"Kabonk!"

Go, go, go, go, go! Yes!!! Michael's long-legged speed had enabled him to make it safely to first base. I found myself, once again, at a little league baseball game, an interesting glimpse into another small world. I watched the little kids bouncing around behind the bleachers, realizing that I was once exactly in their position about thirteen years ago when Clyde played little league. I remember going to some of the games, but I recall almost nothing else but walking around and being bored. A dozen years later, however, things are quite different. Sure, these aren't the Red Sox, but baseball is baseball. Still, I've hardly been to any of these little league games in recent years. Last summer I went to two of Michael and Gabriel's, but now Michael is in the Minor league (he's ten) and the kids actually do the pitching. That alone is pretty impressive, since a lot of those kids can probably throw and hit better than I can. *sigh*

Anyway, back to the game. After finishing Friday cleaning, my mom and I decided to go to at least part of Michael's game. We arrived, as it turned out, an hour and a quarter after the game began, but better late than never. However, Michael hadn't played a whole lot before then anyway, so we didn't miss much. As I said, he got a hit and made it to first base. Then the girl after him got hit by the pitch so he advanced to second base.

In response to other parents' inquiries, the mother of the girl limping to first answered unconcernedly, "She's fine. She'd be angry with me if I went over there. She knows where I am, so if she needs me she can find me. I'm just surprised she didn't wallop him back." Haha, sounds like the girl knows how to hold her own amongst a bunch of boys.

Back to Michael. He also made it to third base on a wild pitch, and then he ran for home on another wild pitch. With baited breath we watched him and the pitcher race for home as the catcher scooped up the ball. Would he make it? It looked a little bleak, but as the pitcher caught the ball while they both arrived--the pitcher dropped it! Michael was safe! He had scored! The bleachers went wild, especially our section, which was comprised of Andrea, Kimberly, Diane, Craig, my mom, and me. Quite the fan club.:) As I said, we pretty much went wild, but maybe in a slightly muted way. After all, we were in Dublin Field, not Fenway Park.

After we left, I had my mom drop me off at the town hall. Our town was having an open mike evening and my dad had taken the Karen guys down to watch and participate. They had tried to persuade me to bring my violin so with some reluctance I brought it in with me. The time was relaxing and extremely small. In fact, besides my dad and the three Karen guys, it was just one man and one lady. We still had some fun though. I played a couple of simple pieces that I happened to have memorized (Bach and Ashokan Farewell, a song, very popular at Del Rossi's and the weddings I've played for, that I've felt so well associated with for the past five years that it's weird to hear other people play it). The acoustics in the place were amazing, so it was very satisfying.

The man proved to be an excellent guitar player, able to follow along with a song even if he didn't know it. Apparently he's done some jamming with my Uncle Earl in the past, so my dad says. The lady played the guitar as well, and she had a fine country voice. With graying black hair that went past her waist, light jeans, cow boy boots, and red glasses, she got up on stage with her guitar and microphone and sang us some pieces that she'd written herself "a few years ago." They weren't too shabby either. One of them was one she'd written for her son when he graduated from high school, called "You are the Arrow, I am the Bow." Or something like that. But she strummed heartily and kissed that microphone with almost as much gusto for her six-person audience as she would have for a fawning crowd.

With the sun sinking, we excused ourselves and clambered into the car for home. The Karen guys then joined us for Sabbath meeting (I guess Mercy and Htee Khu had kind of turned in for the evening), and we had a pleasant evening with them. I'm blessed with great cousins, I gotta tell ya! Two weeks before, we had all of the Karen kids plus Erinn up to our house for Sabbath meeting and we had a smashing time visiting with them. The guys told us all kinds of funny stories about their antics in Thailand. Like how there was a live wire in school and they used to put frogs on it and turn the light on. Or how Mark brought a "dead" snake into class one time and it turned out to be alive (Aunt June wasn't too thrilled:). There were others, I'm sure, but they told these stories with such animation and effect (Htoo Eh has amazing story-telling skills--just picture him when he's fluent in English!) that they kept us laughing for quite some time. This evening, however, wasn't as long or as entertaining, but they still made me laugh nonetheless. But I suppose that such a skill isn't so very hard to acquire if you're trying to induce me into laughter.

After our brief meeting and visiting, we then partook of my birthday cake. I know what you're thinking. One may know someone's birthday without knowing them well, but one cannot know someone well unless you know at least roughly when their birthday is. So, since of course most of my readers know me well, you are scratching your well-placed scalps. My birthday is in April. It is now the month of June. Something doesn't compute! Well, my cake was not nearly two months old, it just was rather--er, late.

You see, on my birthday, I had no cake. I know, what a travesty! Yes, I had no birthday cake, no birthday banner, no carefully selected birthday menu, no "let's have three young ladies pray for Kayla on her birthday" as such is the Bible school custom. Why was there such over sight? Because, dear people, we were in Indianapolis at the time, running our brains into curly q's with all our activities, so such small things were quite unheard of!

That being said, despite these small absences, I had an incredible birthday. For one thing, we had no class. For another, instead of class or even doing work projects we all got to go to the Creation Museum. And, because there were so many of us spread out over three vans, when Craig announced over the walkie-talkies that my birthday minute was to come shortly upon us, I had the vast privilege of being sung to about four times in the space of four minutes. Once from one van, twice from the other van (the second verse was "May God bless you always, may God bless you always . . ."), and again from my own van. Only, as they had already sung to me on the commencement of our trip an hour earlier, they sang "Happy Birth Minute" to me instead.:)

Besides all this, instead of eating some random on-the-road meal from the coolers, we all got to go OUT to eat on my birthday. Craig had asked me a couple weeks before if I liked Fazoli's enough to go there on my birthday. Although I might have preferred falafel, I like Fazoli's, so I said, "Sure!" Thus, it was practically settled. And if that weren't enough, we all stopped for icecream on the way back! Or frozen custard, to be more precise. So I felt anything but cheated, I assure you. And yet . . .

. . . . Something can be said for the satisfaction of having your own birthday cake. Yes, eating ice cream out with friends is a very fine thing, but if you don't actually blow out candles, munch on the delectable stuff (cake, not candles) with family and friends, and then consume its rich toothsomeness little by little at your leisure because it's the one time in the year when you have every right to be a bit of a pig, a birthday just doesn't seem to have reached its full essence. So perhaps I can sympathize with my five-year-old friend Joel who claimed that it was still his birthday two days after the fact because he hadn't had his birthday cake. If you go by his definition, I just had a very long birthday indeed!

Anyway, my mom was determined that I should still have a birthday cake, even if we were on the road. So she bought the ice cream (being at Cara's for her birthday some years ago converted me to Aunt Ali's ice cream cakes :), stuck it in the freezer, and waited. The first few weeks after my birthday were buzzing with the activity of finishing up the school year and getting ready for graduation, then I continued living at Fairwood for the next two weeks as I did summer work, and then we went to Georgia, so no time seemed very convenient to re-celebrate the occasion. Until now.

I told mom she didn't have to bother with nineteen candles, but she did it anyway. And so, despite how silly it felt, everybody sang happy birthday to me one last time and I blew out my candles. I felt a little ridiculous, and I jokingly told John he should blow out the candles with me since his birthday was only four days away, but for some reason he didn't.

Thus, my birthday is officially at an end, according to Joel H.

But the evening didn't end there. The Karen guys left soon, but my mom wanted to watched a movie. "Under the Greenwood Tree" was one she had a fancy to watch since she had picked it up at the video rental store. My mom is a fan of BBC movies, and I'll admit that I am also, in a way. Who can't love an organization that puts out great movies of books by Austen, Dickens, and Gaskell? Ya gotta love people like that.

The story told in this movie, however, was not written by any Jane, Charlie, or Liz. In fact, I have no idea who wrote it. I was pretty sure, though, that it was the very same movie that my mom had rented a year or two before when just she, Daddy, and I were home, and I was pretty sure that it was a kissy movie. My mom, however, had no recollection of having ever heard of the film before in her life, so she in all innocence picked it up again and brought it home. Willing to humor her (I pride myself in my and even my brothers' well-rounded movie watching), we all sat down and launched into the romantic tale, even though my suspicions were quickly justified--it was the very same movie.

I will not pretend that the whole video was a misery to watch from start to finish. Although I never could figure out why it was given its title (they had many "takes" of what was presumably a greenwood tree, but nothing ever happened under it or any where near it), there were many chuckle-starting moments, like when the whole small church choir and orchestra fell into a drunken sleep in the balcony and the bass player fell on his instrument with his bow and the whole group woke with a start and began playing in a frenzy right during the middle of the sermon. Or when the jealous villagers poured liquor into the new organ and it started to sound drunk during the service. Despite the humor and relative decency of the movie, though, I can't deny that there were many scenarios that caused cringing. The best part about it though was this time my brothers were there to endure them with me, so we smacked our foreheads, hid our eyes, shook our heads, or laughed out loud all together at such moments as the "love at first sight" glimpse, or when the moonstruck fellow was still standing in the snow an hour later in exactly the same position, gazing at her window. If one must watch a corny movie, it is always much better to watch it with your brothers. After all, you don't have to feel too embarrassed that you're even watching the movie in the first place because they're watching it with you! Hence, you can enjoy it together in a much more delightful way.

Even if the mother who you're trying to bless is fast asleep in her chair almost the whole time.