Over the past few weeks, I discovered that I l-o-v-e hitting softballs. I want to buy a batting cage for the back yard because I enjoy it so much. I find this odd seeing that the thought of sitting in front of a TV and actually watching baseball sounds about as appealing to me as does letting someone strip me down, tie me up in the woods, covering me in honey, and leaving me for a few days. (That's saying something people, I seem to define bug-o-phob over the last few years.)
Because of this new found pleasure, and because I spent most of July fourth with my brother, sister-in-law, and my niece, I got them to go out to The Meadows to hit a few balls with me. Well, we adults hit a few balls, and Olivia rode the coin operated cars.
If you've never been to The Meadows batting cages, they've got softball, little league, teener, and major league cages. The softball cage is definitely for someone like me; which is to say, someone who hasn't touched a baseball bat since little league oh, let's say 25 years ago, but one day gets a bug up their butt and thinks, hey, I HATE baseball, let's go to the batting cages. For reasons I still don't understand—maybe I was declaring my own independence this day—I decided that after three afternoons spent hitting softballs, I was going to step up to the majors. After all, I was hitting more softballs than not. Haha. I learned a few things that day; I can say “WHAT THE F*&#” A LOT in a very short period, baseballs are smaller targets than softballs, baseballs hurt when they hit you, and I might be slightly crazy.
Shortly after I realized I wasn't able to do much more than change the trajectory of the ball when it, without fail, do little more than clip my bat I decided it was time to step up. That was a stupid thought if ever I've had one. I moved into the plate and the next ball came flying at me, and I knocked the hell out of that ball—with my hands. In the background, through the pain ringing in my ears from the agony of my hands wrapped around the bat while they took a whack from a major league ball, I heard my brother say “JC, you hit that outta the park, are you ok?” Before I even thought to answer him, I thought (at a machine, mind you) “you bitch, you will not beat me”. I told him I was fine and turned back to the bitch. My hands were already numbing up quite nicely, so it was a challenge keeping the bat steady, but I pulled myself together to show that nasty machine it couldn't scare me. I managed to hit a few more balls (okay, hit may only count for two of the pitches, clipping a few would be more accurate). I was smart enough to to move back to softball after my time was up, and proceeded to hit quite a few balls. My brother was slightly amazed I didn't curl into the fetal position and cry like a little girl, but he doesn't quite realize the extremes of my competitiveness. If I feel like someone, or something in this case, is trying to beat me, you can bet your dupa I'm going to do what I can to come out on top. Even if it's moving to another cage and beating the hell out of a few balls. I won. I think only crazy people involve machines in their competitiveness.
When enough was enough (and when we were out of quarters for the cars Olivia so loved) I said, “let's go get ice cream!” After all, who doesn't fix ouchies with ice cream?! Who'd've thunk we could top my stupidity that day? Oh, but we did. Sean and Tiffany had coupons for Meadows ice cream—buy one get one free of equal or lesser value—which was perfect, three of us and Olivia. Sean ordered a medium cone, Tiffany and I ordered small cones, and we ordered Olivia the child size in a cup. The girl at the counter first looked at us and said, “I can only use one of these because only two of those are the same.” Tiffany was nice enough to point out the coupon states equal or lesser value, which took a moment for dumbgirl to process, but she finally smiled blankly and took the coupons and the money back and disappeared into the window once again. We didn't realize the true depth of her genius until she stuck her head out of the window again and handed me my money back and said, “well, I don't need this at all then.”
I was baffled. I stood there for a second trying to let reality catch up to me and finally looked back at my also bewildered companions and asked, “it is me, right?” We stood staring at each other in much the way I imagine dumbgirl must stare at most people when some kind stranger pulled us back from planet brainless and said, “run, don't question it, just run!!” While we didn't quite run, we gave up trying to figure out and decided it was the universe apologizing for the mean machine attacking me.
We sat in the adirondack chairs and enjoyed our ice cream almost as much as we enjoyed watching Olivia try to eat what everyone else had before she decided to stroll off to flirt with an older boy. God help those two. That child isn't yet a year old and she's hitting on 2 year olds.
My hands are now recovering nicely. Very slowly, but nicely. I've no doubt it is a result of free ice cream shortly after the injury. They blew up like overfilled sausages for a few days, my pinkie is still occasionally without feeling, and the bruises make me look like I have some kind of weird skin disease, but you can bet I'm going back to show that machine it is small and weak.
Yay for holiday fun.
