¿Quien es mas macho?

I’ve been catching up with a television series that I had until now ignored: Rescue Me, Dennis Leary’s hyper-masculine, post-9/11 drama about New York City firefighters. The show is on Wednesday nights at 10:00 and that may explain why I haven’t watched it previously. Bravo’s Project Runway and Top Chef are also on Wednesday nights and those, being the only television besides American Idol that Nancy watches regularly, take precedence. I must admit to falling into the clutches of those reality shows as well; at least they focus on people with actual talent. Though I think I can honestly say that I’m done with American Idol after watching them make that poor Blake fellow sing a song he must surely have hated with all his semi-hipster, beat-boxing little heart. “This Is My Now”?! Ack! And this after preaching song choice, song choice, song choice all season long. Hypocrites. He lost, of course. Upon reflection, my sudden yearning to add Rescue Me into my viewing schedule may in fact be a way to reclaim some of the masculinity that is surely being drained from me by singing, fashion, and cooking shows.

My other effort to reclaim some manliness – somewhat ironically, softball – got off to a less than totally auspicious start on Tuesday at my first official game with the team: The Fighting Pacifists (a name that spells clever, nerdy trouble from the outset). We got thumped (14-3). The highlight was watching the city fireworks display from the field, though I worried a little about getting distracted by the bright flashes and taking a hard ground ball in the chops. I played shortstop and did fine in the field: no errors, but nothing spectacular, either. But I only went 1 for 3 at the plate, and began my tenure on the team by grounding into a double-play: no easy feat in softball, with its shortened base paths. Many of you know that one of my defining traits as a ballplayer has always been: “no wheels.” Slow doesn’t begin to describe it. My second plate appearance went better: I drove the ball down the first base line for an RBI single that I stretched into a double (but just barely). But then I got thrown out at the plate trying to score from second on a single. The third base coach waved me in like I had plenty of time, and any normal person likely would have been able to go in standing. Me? I had to slide in an effort to beat the throw (which I did, doggonnit!) but was called out. Where did that throw come from? I think they might have thrown the ball around the horn once before figuring out that I was still lumbering toward home. By the way, it turns out that if you haven’t had the opportunity to slide in to a base in over 10 years, you may want to work up to it slowly; it’s a lot more painful that it used to be. And while I did manage to get some macho points in the form of a lot of dirt and a little blood, in retrospect I wish David had been coaching third and given me the following advice:



And while I am fighting the growing up process, David is making big strides in that area. First, he got a relatively short haircut for the first time. For those of you who haven’t seen pictures of Dave yet, he has beautiful wavy/curly hair that has a Michael Hutchence quality to it when it gets really long. We weren’t allowed to cut it for a long time because the bios wanted him to have cornrows eventually. But their rights have now been terminated and we got tired of saying “Actually, he’s a boy,” whenever anyone would see him and inevitably say, “Oh, what a beautiful little girl!” He also moved up from a crib to a toddler bed this week and is LOVING IT! Of course, it’s meant a change in his sleeping patterns now that he can get out of the bed on his own. There’s something both maddening and hopelessly charming in the silhouette of a 2’11” munchkin with a blanket padding past our bed at 2:30 in the morning, almost quietly saying. “Mama. Mama. Juice.” Of course, that’s the happy, cute version. There’s also the 4th of July version (before we learned to leave his door ajar) that included banging on the door and screaming “MAMA!! MAMA!!” on any number of occasions when one of our neighbors lit off his atomic fireworks: the ones that make that sound somewhere between a thump and a whoosh when you light them off and then shake the windows when they explode. Bravery doesn't come all at once.

I’ve never liked the 4th of July all that much. It’s not that I’m unpatriotic – I don’t actually think about that very much; it’s that I don’t like holidays where the reigning purpose is getting drunk and blowing stuff up (Halloween fits in here, too, with the added benefit of dressing up as well). And it’s not that I’m against getting drunk or blowing stuff up (or wearing a costume, for that matter): it’s just the combination. Maybe it’s a product of growing up in a place where personal fireworks shows were illegal. But here in Indiana, almost nothing (besides manufacturing methamphetamines) that can hurt you or start a fire in someone else’s house or yard is illegal. Beginning around the first of June, you can see tents selling fireworks cropping up on almost every corner. They sell things like “Black Cat: The BIG ones!” And it seems like they all have “Buy One Get Two Free!” sales, which has the result of keeping the neighborhoods rocking until the dawn’s early light. At 11:00 on Wednesday night, after David had woken up for the third time, I took a walk through what sounded and looked like a Middle Eastern red zone but turned out to be our street, and found one of my neighbors just standing in his driveway lighting off freakishly big fireworks seemingly for nobody but himself. He’s a big guy: shaved head, tattoos, drives a big truck. I thought about asking him to stop for the night, but then I noticed that pain in my shoulder and my leg and I thought better of it.

Usted es mas macho.