Squeaky Shoes and Other News

I have squeaky shoes.

That’s what I get for buying cheap sneakers from Wal-Mart in an after-Christmas sale. The air chambers in both shoes developed a leak, so with each step I take air is expelled from one air chamber while the other air chamber is refilling. I discovered this while painting the trim in our hallway. I kept hearing a squeaky sound behind me. I thought there might be a mouse in one of the bedrooms, but each time I stepped into a room and stood still to listen for the critter the squeaking would stop. When I returned to the hallway it resumed. I discovered the truth when the mouse went jogging with me.

***

Captain Chaos petitioned me for something to eat while I was working with General Mayhem on math. We were standing at the chalkboard combining like terms in binomial and trinomial phrases when the girl appeared at my knee caps.

“DadcanIhavecrackers?Please?DadcanIhavecrackers?I’dreallyliketohavesomecrackersdadTheyareonthe counterCan I have some please?” she rattled off like a St. Valentine’s Day machine gun.

Without giving me a chance to reply she wandered off. That’s when I heard her add, “They will make me happy and strong!”

***

Yesterday was “Scout Day at the K,” the annual promotion at Kaufman Stadium where scouts who sold a bajillion dollars worth of popcorn attended the game for free.

It was a typical Kansas City Royals baseball game. They were out of the game by the fourth inning. Honestly, they should rename the team the Cubs West. I noticed that this year the team is flying a large blue flag commemorating 25 years since the Royals won the World Series. What that really means is that they haven’t accomplished anything significant in25 years. Can you imagine a flag flying over Wrigley Field commemorating 102 years since their last World Series? That won’t change this year, either, as the Cubs still haven’t installed a goat at Wrigley. Write those letters, folks!

Anyway, if the Royals were out of the game by the fourth inning, Major Havoc was out of the game by the first. Nothing I did kept his attention. He seems to be under the impression that the entire purpose of going to the ballpark is to eat five dollar hot dogs and drink five dollar bottles of water and eat equally overpriced cotton candy. When he did not get to do these things he made the game fairly miserable. Between announcing how bored he was and bouncing up and down in his seat like he had springs in his butt, he pretended to shoot yellow cars as they drove past the stadium on interstate 70. He spent the sixth inning making fart noises on his hand. Whenever the Royals attempted to generate false interest in the game by displaying “MAKE SOME NOISE” on the Jumbotron he screeched with all the ear-piercing enthusiasm of a pre-pubescent boy. Just when I thought my right eardrum would start to bleed he decided to sit on my other side and significantly reduce my hearing ability in that ear, too. When the decibel meter on the Jumbotron hit the highest mark he turned to me and said, “Dad, look, I did that with my voice!”

“Huh?”

I resolved yesterday to never again car pool to a baseball game. I liked the people I was with and I enjoyed their company, but if I had had my own wheels we would have been out of that stadium after the second inning, the inning I spent in a concession line for our ONLY food purchase of the day. That’s where I enjoyed watching the cashier walk away from the counter and disappear for ten minutes to loudly berate the kitchen staff for repeatedly ignoring her calls for corn dogs. Those guys just stared at her, showing absolutely no interest in moving faster than tar balls on a Louisiana beach. Go Royals!

***

Tonight I open a new chapter in my life. Tonight I begin Karate class. General Mayhem has attended Young Champions Karate classes for seven years. Eighteen months ago both the Major and the Boss began learning Karate. Now it’s the Captain’s turn, and I get to attend class with her. This should be interesting. Captain Chaos is the girl who puts the hyper in hyperactive. She moves so much she makes hummingbirds nervous. She’s the girl that jumped into one of the General’s classes and told one very serious sensei that she was a pink belt ready for class. The man stared at her, completely lost for words. My daughter is very excited. She has been ready to start Karate for a year. We told her that when she turned six years old she could start class. Now she’s six. I suspect that I am entering an entirely new source of blog material.

Buck Night at the K

The highlight of Major Havoc’s second trip to a professional baseball game Wednesday night was eating 4 ½ hot dogs courtesy of “Buck Night at the K,” the one promotion where fans do not finance through their food purchases the multi-million dollar payroll of the worst team in the American League. All sodas, hot dogs, and peanuts were a buck apiece. Keeping score of his ballpark frank consumption was far more entertaining than keeping score of the game. The Mariners so thoroughly shellacked the Royals that the highlight that drew the most cheers throughout the entire evening was the cat that ran out onto the field and stopped the fifth inning for two minutes while the ground crew and a few police officers chased the scared feline around right field until they corralled it in the bullpen. That replay received more cheers than anything the team did.

I realized Wednesday night that I may be the worst father to go to a ballgame with because I love to pay attention to the game. I also score the game. Precisely. I like to know what each batter did in each of his previous at bats when he strolls to the plate. This means that there are a couple of things that seriously challenge that entire concept of unconditional spousal or parental love: arriving at the ballpark after the starting line-ups are announced and male children who have to go potty but don’t mention their need until the first batter of the inning is announced and the need has become a national emergency. It is then that I have to turn over the scoring duties to the Boss. Returning to the score card a few minutes later is a waking nightmare. Those tiny boxes with the little diamonds in the center are filled with tinier pictures of little men running, or literary narratives such as, “The guy in the white uniform hit the ball and somebody threw him out at first. I think. I don’t know what happened to the next guy.”

“But the Mariners scored five runs while I was gone. What happened?”

“They did? Beats me. I really wasn't paying attention.”

The Human Wiener truly enjoyed his night at the ballpark but he enjoyed seat hopping even more, sitting next to the Boss’ co-workers and chatting about everything, whether or not they were listening. We were part of a large group of employees from Fort Leavenworth. The Boss was seat hopping, too, chatting with friends during the game and watching the animated races on the Jumbotron during the inning changes. We waved across the stadium to each other in the seventh inning. It was actually the perfect arrangement. She was happy to visit with friends and I was happy to watch the game and the boy was happy to pack away hot dogs at an astonishing rate. General Mayhem sat next to me for the final three innings, whooping for the home team in an ear piercing pitch that had a few beagles howling the next county over. If he can screech just a little higher he might leave the range of human hearing and make it possible to sit next to him without needing hearing protection.

When a franchise stinks as badly as the Royals do, it is not surprising that the team hires young, good looking men and women to don team jerseys and walk through the stands, attempting to wake the slumbering crowd and get them cheering. They might as well try. The players on the field can't get anyone to cheer. The fans responded accordingly for about five seconds, and then settled down to watch the Royals strand yet another runner on base. 12 runners were left on base by the end of the game. Twice an inning ended on a weak grounder with bases loaded. Since it was also “80’s Night,” these same employees were dressed “retro,” with really bad hair-dos and those hideous powder blue jerseys that the Royals wore for many years. Powder blue baseball uniforms did not look good in ’85 and twenty-four years has done nothing to improve their appearance. They weren’t quite as bad as the manly shorts that the White Sox briefly wore during the seventies, but that was back when Bill Veeck owned the team, so shorts were nothing compared to the center field shower and disco demolition night that left a hole burned in the center field turf of Comiskey Park.

I did get to see something at the game that I’ve never seen before, besides the pure joy of a six-year-old’s unabated gluttony. The Mariners pulled off a perfect squeeze play. Their batter bunted the ball just past the pitcher’s mound but not hard enough to reach the second baseman. The bases were loaded and their third base runner scored with ease. It’s a gutsy play to call. It’s an impressive play to watch.

I am certain that we will do this again next year. It was fun. The boys enjoyed themselves (the captain was at home with a sitter). And a trip to the ballpark did not break our bank. That’s a good combination.