A week ago, a quarter of a Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pie appeared on my car's rear bumper. I assumed some punk-ass kid from, I dunno, the "hood" put it there as some kind of hilarious joke. No harm, though, so I just drove with it and assumed it would fall off. 20 miles later, nope. Still there. So now it was an endurance test.
Weekend? Yup. Still there.
Monday? Getting a couple red moldy spots. Still there.
Rain? Tenacious.
65MPH? Indefatigable.
Sadly, this morning it was frozen and fragile, and had to be brushed off with the first dusting of snow of the season. Oatmeal Cream Pie remnant, I salute ye.
You know, I don't even care about baseball. I even laugh at the Red Sox fans when they get all worked up about "This is The Year" and "We're gonna beat The Curse!" They never learn. If it ain't meant to be, it ain't meant to be. Less fatalistically, the more desperate you are to prove yourself, the more likely you are to screw up.
But last night, sitting in a smoky restaurant at 11:30, after the Yankees closed their deficit, beautiful Sox fangirl on my arm, I could feel the stark disappointment. The dejection that everyone knew, whether for an hour or five minutes, was finally inevitable.
In 1989, Emerson Fittipaldi and Al Unser, Jr. were swapping first and second in the last laps of the Indy 500. Neither had ever won it, but Emmo was already a Formula 1 world champion. Little Al was a rising star, trying to prove he was as good as his dad, a 4-time Indy winner. As they glided around slower traffic, maybe 5 laps from the finish, Emmo's car drifted up - the normal racing line - and tapped Al's wheel coming out of a turn. Al's car spun backward and crunched against the outside wall. Emmo finished the race under a yellow flag.
I actually felt a headache begin this morning. I was doing my normal "Wake up at 5:00 am to go pee" thing, and as I moved toward the sink, the Headache Center of my brain whooshed on. Not so much like a light bulb flicking on, more like one of those faders that takes half a second to turn all the way on. It started right in the center of my brain and filled out behind my eyes. It wasn't even that intense, just so noticeably all of a sudden there.
I know I didn't just notice it then because I thought when I awoke, "Huh, my lips are chapped, my mouth is dry and my throat is sore, but for once, I don't have a headache." Perhaps I should just stop thinking things.
