Another Level

The World Cup is going on right now in Brazil. If I had grown up playing soccer, I am sure that I would enjoy watching the games much more. As it is, I grew up playing baseball.

So now, church league softball games in Live Oak are the highlight of my week.

Whatever skills that I acquired for softball did not come easy, though...

Lumberton, North Carolina. 1989-1992.

Coach wants to put me at catcher on my Little League team, but Dad tells him that is not a good idea, because I am “bat blind.”

This means that I flinch when the batter swings in front of me as I try to catch the ball. Perhaps it is a problem that could be worked out with practice, but I have no desire to be a catcher, really. It takes too long to constantly be changing in and out of that equipment in between innings when it is my turn to hit: The shin guards, the chest protector, the helmet and mask. The shin guards and chest protector have all sorts of straps to fasten. Plus, the catcher takes a beating in every game, for sure. Pitchers throw the ball hard into the dirt in front of home plate. There are foul tips, and collisions with base runners when I am supposed to block the plate as they round third base.



Still, during one of our games while our catcher is putting on his equipment again (he made the last out at bat in the inning before), the pitcher, Matt, asks me to get behind home plate and catch while he throws a few pitches to keep his arm loose.

I do not bother to use the catcher’s mitt, but rather my regular glove that I wear at my regular position at second base.

As the pitcher hurls the ball at me, it snaps loudly against the leather pocket. That is how you know that you are catching the ball in the pocket of the glove like you are supposed to- the loud pop.

One after another he tosses to me, including a couple of breaking pitches. It occurs to me that this is one of the hardest throwing games of catch that I have ever played in my life, and it also dawns on me, now, that I am playing a level of baseball where I am expected to hit a ball traveling faster than what I am used to catching in the field.

I tell this to my dad after the game, and he gives me a look like I am a little strange, like it is an obvious observation that I have made.

***

“High school is where you really begin to learn how to play baseball,” I heard Roger Clemens say once.

Well, I am not to high school yet, but next is junior high baseball at Littlefield. Littlefield is grades 7-12, and I play second base on the junior high team.

One day at practice, we decide to use the pitching machine that the high school team does, inside the batting cage.

There is a warped spot on the rollers that shoot out the ball. Actually there is a chunk missing from the roller. If the ball hits that warped spot, then it is likely to spray the pitch anywhere. I am watching when, more than once, the machine shoots a high speed fastball right at the batter’s head.



As with becoming a catcher, I have no desire to get into the batting cage with that broken machine, and I complain to the coach.

He rolls his eyes, and I realize that I need to get in there to stay in his good graces.

Once inside, the ball never comes at my head, but my fear that it might, combined with the fact that these are the fastest pitches that I have ever tried to hit in my life, means that I have zero success putting the bat on the ball. It is highly frustrating.

“You’ve got to do something, Nathan,” the coach says. “This is how fast the pitchers will be throwing, now. Hold your bat out and bunt the ball.”

This, I can do.

In another practice, we are performing infield drills where the runner on first attempts to steal, and as second baseman I cover the bag.

The catcher hums the ball to the bag, and I go to one knee to field it. The runner sliding in hits my leg, just as the ball gets right in my face. My glove drops slightly, and the ball hits the top of my glove and barely skips over my head.

“Hmm,” the coach grunts disapprovingly. I narrowly avoided getting smashed in the face with the baseball.

Another day, the coach gets one of the pitchers on the high school team to throw to us in a simulated game.

The high school pitcher is a very hard thrower. He is also very wild, both in his pitching and in his life. He has been suspended multiple times for fighting, and I generally avoid him in the hallways.

I watched one game where he was pitching, and he threw a ball that caught the batter square in the face. The batter just stayed face down on the ground for a few minutes. When he did leave, it was with the help of other people, and he went on to the hospital.

I have no desire to get in the batter’s box against the high school pitcher, either. My younger brother is on the team, and to his credit and courage does step in against the high school pitcher. I stay on the bench, though, hoping the coach does not notice that I have not hit, yet. If the coach does notice, he says nothing about it. To my relief, the practice ends without me having to step to the plate against this wild, hard thrower.

I have a pretty decent season with the Littlefield team, though. I do not hit well, but I field my position at second base better than others who want to play there.

In 1991, the Robeson County school systems merge, and I go to Lumberton junior high school for my 9th grade year. The class is much larger than what there was at Littlefield, and the competition to make the junior high school baseball team here is much more intense.

During tryouts, I field a throw coming in from the outfield to second base. The runner is coming from first, trying to take the extra base. I catch the ball, but the runner’s slide knocks me out of the way before I can apply the tag.

The coach shakes his head at me.

“They’re going to be wearing metal spikes, now,” he says. You cover the bag like that, and you’re going to get messed up.



I think I do pretty well fielding my position in tryouts, but it is obvious that I do not have the throwing arm that other guys on the team do.

The coach watches me relay a cutoff from right field to third base. He has me do it a few more times, and I can tell he does not like what he sees as far as how quickly and accurately I can get the ball there.

Later, I field a ground ball and throw it to first the way that I always do. But the coach yells at me, “Charge the ball!”

Then he asks the rest of the team in a loud voice, “What kind of defense do we play?”

“Attack defense!” all the other players shout in unison.

Tryouts are not a pleasant experience, and neither is it a good feeling when I see the final roster posted on the gym wall early one morning when I arrive at the compound that is called the junior high school. My name is not on the list.

I realize that I have come to another level of baseball, where the ball travels faster with more breaking pitches, and the players wear metal spikes. It is a level where I am not good enough to compete, anymore.

One of the assistant coaches talks to me during an afternoon after school, encouraging me to work harder and try out for the high school team next year. But this is a transition I do not make. Instead, I join the cross country team in high school and earn a letter in that sport.

***

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

I enjoy a softball game this evening, playing with high school and college baseball players who wear metal spikes, throw the ball like a rocket and can hit it out of the park.

Thanks to the baseball experience that I had growing up, though, I can hold a spot on this field and with this team. The captain keeps me in for about half the game, usually, and at catcher- which is a much different position in slow pitch softball than in baseball. I do not mind being a catcher in slow pitch softball.



Playing softball is one of the most enjoyable things that I do, now.

I also understand baseball better than any other sport, so I get more enjoyment out of watching a game than with other sports.

As a little league and junior high baseball player, I escaped the experience without any broken bones, concussions or a smashed-in face.

All in all, baseball and softball have been great experiences for me.

Claustrophobia

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

Rather than heading out to hit the usual restaurants and bars of Live Oak on this Friday night, I am staying at home. I have dumped a little more cash at these places than I would prefer over the past couple of weeks, and also my body is telling me to take a break.

So I stay in and try to watch the College World Series- Ole Miss versus UVA- but that gets rained out. There is also World Cup soccer. This is okay entertainment, but I really do not understand the game of soccer well enough to appreciate it, and I grow tired of watching players flop on the ground in fake agony, only to hop up like nothing happened. I suppose if I had been raised playing soccer, like I was with baseball, the World Cup would be more meaningful to me.

So I am alone with my thoughts, sitting in my living room. After typing a couple of pages for the novel I am working on, I head out to look at the stars at around 2:30 am. My handheld planetarium/ GPS tells me that Saturn is up and points me to where it is in the sky. Unfortunately, oak trees block my view.



If I could see Saturn, I would bring out my telescope. The last time I viewed Saturn through my scope was in 2005 at Carolina Beach, NC. My scope is strong enough for me to clearly see the rings of Saturn.

The summer triangle is directly overhead, consisting of the stars Altair, Deneb and Vega.



Looking up at the stars is always a wondrous thing for me. It reminds me of how much there is out there to explore and learn. The human species has not even gotten started. Our existence is like the blink of an eye in the lifetime of what is to come.

Studying the stars sometimes triggers sadness in me, though. I admit that I am prone to little bouts with depression, especially on nights like this when I am alone. But I do not worry about that too much. In truth, I think it is a natural part of the human condition to be depressed at times. A person who is never depressed is not really paying attention to the world around them, in my opinion. Perhaps that is the happiest way to go through life, though- to stay busy with work or family or whatever and just not think about things too much. I am happiest now when I am at work, caught up in arguing a case in front of a judge or jury, or battling the prosecutor about some other matter. It keeps my mind occupied.

Looking up at the stars makes me feel claustrophobic as well. To think these stars in constellations like the Big Dipper and Orion are the closest to earth, and they are still thousands and millions of light years away, untouchable and unreachable, and to know that there are perhaps billions of galaxies- not stars, galaxies- out in the darkness that I cannot see, creates in me the sensation that I am like a frog trapped in a glass jar.

In law school, I experienced for the first time the frustration of not being smarter. I recognized that the professors there, and some of the students, could run circles around me intellectually. I sometimes as well felt their contempt for me in not being able to keep up.

This has helped me be more patient in dealing with clients in my job with the Public Defender’s Office, as I have seen other lawyers look at the clients the same way that I saw some professors look at me.

One of my classmates with whom I have remained in contact after graduation said to me, “I can understand the allure of being a Public Defender. When you’re talking with clients, you’re always the smartest guy in the room.”

I had never thought of it that way, but I suppose he is right. That view kind of takes the nobility out of the work, though.

Anyway, the stars remind me of law school and that I am not nearly smart enough to understand the universe the way other humans on this planet do. And even the most intelligent humans who have ever lived probably have the equivalent of a gnat’s comprehension of the true nature of our existence. There are those scientists who hypothesize that multiple other universes exist in other dimensions, perhaps an infinite number of dimensions and universes, both larger and smaller than our own. I suspect they are right, and all of this is just far more complex than I or any human can ever hope to fathom. There is claustrophobia at what I cannot see and sense and understand.



This is part of my frustration with religions, as well. Religions just offer too simple an explanation of our existence and purpose. Yet many people insist that you believe the same as they do, or you are not socially acceptable, and you also risk some sort of eternal punishment.

This blog entry is a ramble, but these are the things on my mind at 2:30 in the morning, in my back yard, looking up at the night sky.

Saturday night will be different. I plan to go out, have a nice meal with adult beverages, and enjoy listening to a band play Southern Rock music. I will watch the beautiful women of Suwannee County who also decide to come out, and I will try to have a conversation with them. I hope I will be generally distracted, and I hope it will be fun.

The House

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

“There it is,” my coworker says to me. “You see it?”

“Yeah,” I answer.

Looking out the window from the passenger seat of the car, I can see about two blocks back, a large two-story house with a turret.

We are moving 25 miles per hour south down Highway 129, so I only get a brief glimpse of it.

“Why is that house haunted?” I ask.

“They say a girl died there, and that she lives upstairs in that tower.”

“Really? How did she die?”

“I don’t know. But my sergeant said they once went into the house, into the upstairs part, and the door closed on them by itself.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That house is always for sale, too,” my colleague continues. “Anytime someone moves in, it’s not very long before they move out and put the house back up for sale."

“I’ll have to check that out sometime,” I say.

We continue driving on to the local bowling alley and enjoy some games with other coworkers.

***

A few days later, I am riding my bike in the early evening and decide to go over to the “haunted house.”

It is on Pine Street, surrounded by a nice group of other houses. Sure enough, there is a “For Sale” sign in the front yard. The house is larger and looks a bit older than the surrounding homes.

I park my bike on the sidewalk leading to the steps of the front porch, putting down the kickstand, taking off my helmet, but carrying the helmet with me.

Looking up at the windows of the turret, they are covered by thin, ghostly white curtains- except for one. In that window, the white curtain is pulled back, revealing only the blackness of the room.

When I step up onto the spacious front porch, I see a mailbox mounted on the wall. There is a slip of colored paper in the box that says “VACANT.”

Walking to my right, the windows of the house are covered with curtains and I am not able to look inside. Several paper wasp nests are high overhead under the roof of the porch. A couple of the wasps in the nest turn to look at me as I walk underneath, but stay put. Gigantic shrubbery marks the end of that side of the porch, so I walk back around to the left.

The left side of the front porch has even more space than the right, and is screened in.

I pull on the screen door to see if it will open, and it does. Some patio type furniture remains inside the screened in portion of the porch. Also, the windows on this side of the house are not blocked with curtains.

Through the first window on my right, I can see a spacious room covered in polished hardwood floors. There is no furniture whatsoever inside, but I see the wooden stairs leading up to the second floor of the house.

At the back wall of the porch is another door with a window. Looking through it, I wonder if perhaps the house is in fact occupied.

I see the kitchen. On the counter are unopened bottles of wine, two-liter drinks, and various kitchen utensils.

Now I feel that I should not be here, that maybe I am trespassing where someone actually lives. But then I see the refrigerator, with both of its doors open, and it again assures me that the place is vacant.

I am about to check if the door to the kitchen is unlocked when I suddenly hear a crash outside. I turn and run out the screened porch and to the front of the house.

My bike has turned over for no apparent reason.

I look around to see if anyone might have done this as I step off the porch, but no one is in sight.

To my surprise, I see that my bike has sustained quite a bit of damage from the fall to the sidewalk. The side of my seat is scuffed, as is the foot pedal where it made contact with the rough concrete. A rock or something has actually cut a hole into the rubber covering the end of my handle bar. And the headlight that I bought for the front of my bike, so that I can ride at night, is completely broken off.

I work on the headlight for a couple of minutes, as this is really disappointing. The light still works, but there is no way to mount it on my bike now, sad to say. The key plastic piece actually snapped when my bike turned over, so I have to put the light in my pocket.

How could this have happened? There is a bit of a breeze, but not strong enough to turn over my bike on a kick stand, I would not think. I also would not think that my bike would have sustained all these marks and damage from just tipping over on the sidewalk.

I look up at the tower, at the black window with the white curtain pulled back, and I wonder…

I mount my bike and get out of there.

***

Thinking back now to that day, I am a little puzzled at myself for leaving the house before I was done exploring. I meant to look through all the windows fully, and then walk around to the back of the house to see what I could see.

For whatever reason, though, I got on my bike after something turned it over, and I pedaled back home.

Perhaps in the near future, I will go back, finish checking out this haunted house, and see what happens. In the meantime, I have to mount a new headlight on my bike.

The Battle

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

I walk onto the back porch and hear water running outside. I know what that means.

My washing machine and dryer actually set outdoors, behind my house on a concrete slab covered by a small roof.

The past few weekends, the washing machine has been acting up, overflowing with water when I first turn it on and not going into the cycles. I have to manually turn the dial to get the cycles to activate. I have not bothered the landlord about this, because it only does it occasionally, and then the machine operates normally for the rest of the loads that day.

I step outside, and sure enough, the machine is running over with water. This is the second time it has done it today, though, and it is the rinse cycle. It has never overflowed on the rinse cycle before.

So I manually turn the dial, and all the water drains out. The machine is not going through the cycles like it should.

Hmm. I suppose I will need to call the landlord about this, now.

I step back to go inside the house, when a bug flies into the side of my head with a good deal of force.

“Jeez!” I say out loud. “Can’t you see where you’re going, insect? I’m standing right here.”

I do not see the bug or where it went, and I walk back into the house.

Later, I put in a second load of clothes after moving the first load to the dryer, and wait while the machine fills with water to see if it will overflow.

Yep, after a couple of minutes, I see that the water level is getting too high. I manually turn the dial and start the machine. I step back, and a bug hits me in the side of the head again.

Suddenly, I feel a burning sensation on my right shoulder blade.

“Whoa!” I yell, and take off running. Kicking over a bucket that I use to wash my car, I almost trip as I sprint out into the back yard, clutching my back. In my peripheral vision, I see a wasp chasing me. I keep running until the wasp veers off.

Now I understand everything. There is a nest somewhere close to my washing machine.

The decision on how to handle this is a quick one. Time for battle.

I give the washing machine a wide berth as I circle the back yard to get to the door. Luckily, I have a spray can of wasp and hornet killer under my sink. After I retrieve it, I take off my shirt and look at my back in the mirror. There is a puncture mark and a welt that has already formed.

Carefully, can in hand at the ready, I step back outside and creep around the corner.



I am only a few feet away from the washing machine, which hums away in its cycle.

But where is the nest?

I see an empty wasp nest under a corner of the roof, and douse it with the spray. I doubt this is the one that I need to be worried about, though. It has been there for some time. I also spray a dirt dauber’s nest and run back out into the yard in case any of them come flying out. None do. Walking around the back of the house, I spot two more empty nests and spray them. But I am still unconvinced that I have found the headquarters of the wasp that stung me.

Okay, I think to myself. I need to creep back up to the washing machine and see what happens.

My head on a swivel, I step off the grass of the lawn and onto the concrete slab where the washing machine sets. I am looking all around.

As I take a small step forward, I suddenly spot the joker. He is actually inside the light fixture, directly above the washing machine. I am much closer to him that I would like to be, and I freeze.



He is perched on the rim of the hole where the electric cord comes out, wings cocked upward, and he is looking directly at me. The nest has to be inside that hole.

I take careful aim with the spray can. Now, a good feeling sweeps over me. He has not moved, and I have him locked in my sights.

I press the button and score a direct hit in his face. He takes off flying away from me in a disoriented manner. Another wasp falls dead out of the hole. I am a little surprised that the one guarding the nest did not fall dead straight away as well.

In a moment, that wasp appears again, flying right at me. I let go with another stream of the poison, waving the can to spread the stream in the air, trying to nail him. Some does hit him again, and he turns away and flies high into the air, disappearing. There is no doubt he will die in a few moments.

The problem is solved. The battle is won.

There is another light fixture, this one above the dryer. I wonder if there might be a nest inside that one as well.

I look into the hole from about five feet away, but do not see anything. Better to be safe than sorry, though. I spray inside the hole with the wasp killer. In a moment, I see movement, and two wasps fall out of that light fixture as well.

This is only the second time in my life that I have been stung by a wasp or bee. The first time was at my house in Kissimmee in 2012, when I opened a trash can outside that had a nest on it.

From the research that I have done, I would guess that it was a "paper wasp" that attacked. The Wikipedia article on them says that they have facial recognition abilities similar to humans. I believe it. I could tell he was looking right at me and studying me before I sprayed him.

The sting causes me to feel a touch nauseous for about half an hour, and there is a little soreness, like one feels after receiving a tetanus shot. Over the next few days, the spot it itches some.

That wasp left a mark, too. As I type this blog entry, a full week after having been stung, there is still discoloration on my shoulder blade about the size of two quarters. It looks like I have a birth mark.

The wasp that stung me was unusually aggressive and unusually tough- or at least that is my opinion. Normally, I can get pretty close to nests and not be attacked, and normally a wasp falls dead immediately after the poison spray touches it.

It probably would have amused anyone who could have seen me yell and sprint across the yard after being stung, and then creep around the yard like an army commando with a spray can.