I am off visiting home and family in PA for a week or so, taking some much needed time off. I will be teaching a fairly condensed course (6 weeks for a core engineering class!) during the second half of the summer, so really, June is about it in terms of any real freedom this summer.
I kicked off this brief respite with an interleague baseball game between the Red Sox and the Phillies on Saturday evening. It is telling that you have to go out of town to see the Red Sox play a baseball game, but it was fun to see a new park and the team on the road. I was with some old and dear college friends of mine, who are much bigger sports fans than I am in general, and who have no compunction about jetting off all over the place to see various teams play. Both are season ticket holders for a variety of sports, and one is even flying off to Germany next month to see the soccer World Cup matches. That is a fan. In any case, the upside for me is that I can occasionally score tickets for things. In this case, I provided lodging at my family's home in PA in exchange for the ticket, and everyone was happy.
The Sox put up an impressive victory, with Josh Beckett on the mound for the Sox. He helped his own cause by driving in two runs, one on a solo home run, the first home run by a Sox pitcher since the institution of the DH in the American League.
By far the most amusing part of the evening, though, (for me) came in the bottom of the seventh inning. I was waiting in line at the concession stand, and there was amother and daughter in front of me. The daughter was a little girl maybe 6 or 7 years old, and she was as precocious and outspoken a child as I have seen in quite some time. She had longish curly brown hair, capped off by a pink Phillies visor, which she was quite proud of.
As we were standing there waiting, she confidently looked up and me and asked "Do I know you from somewhere?" This is amusing to me for a variety of reasons, but mostly because of the age of the questioner. I smiled and looked down at her and answered that I didn't think so, because I was from Boston, and I thought I would remember having met a seven-year old at some point. She then proceeded to give me her name, her mother's name, and pretty much her life story after confidently reaching out and shaking my hand.
She was like a little bundle of energy, darting from topic to topic, telling me about school, and how she broke her arm by falling off a slide that she was walking up the wrong way. She was amazed and amused when I told her that I had also broken my arm between the summer of first and second grades this same way. At this point I was squatting down a bit so I could look her in the eyes as I was talking to her, and she pointed to the little tuft of hair that usually sticks out from the top of my t-shirt. She seemed delighted that I apparently had a hairy chest, gave it a tug and proceeded to make sure her mom knew too.
We were talking about the game a a little bit, and I gleefully pointed out that my team was winning, and gave her a little wink and stuck my tongue out. She responded in kind just as her mother looked down at her and chastized her (gently) for sticking her tongue out at strangers. I 'fessed up that I started it, her mom smiled and collected their food and started to lead the little girl back to her seat, but not before she shook my hand again and I told her what a pleasure it had been to meet her.
I know that little girls can be just as much of a terror as little boys, but somehow I can't imagine having that particular conversation with a similarly-aged little boy. She was a cutie, and made the night.
