Fever Pitch

S is for Spring. Spring is for baseball.

In the movie Fever Pitch, Drew Barrymore’s character dates a guy who is a diehard Red Sox fan. She goes to all of the games with him despite his crazy “fan girl” obsession because she loves him. His dedication to the team and through them, his grandfather’s memory, is something she is willing to put up with for the sake of their relationship.

My boyfriend AJ, who plays baseball for UC Riverside, had a game at SDSU, so my two friends, Steph and Tommy, and I made the difficult trek there to watch them play. Driving to the field we got lost and when we got there, Steph and I ran around the parking area trying to find the parking permits. When we finally arrived at the game, we were an hour late and almost four innings in. We still got to sit through two and a half hours for the last seven innings and cheered our boys on to victory. Although I’m sure he was ecstatic we were there, the end was the moment I’d been waiting all day for, getting to see my player for the few minutes before he left for school. Three hours of driving, stressing, cheering and anticipating in exchange for five minutes, but five perfect minutes with the boy I see every few weeks during the season. So worth it.

Present Tense, Not Future Tense.

After dinner on my 17^th birthday, my boyfriend, Jordan, and I sat on the couch watching some sappy chick flick. While fiddling with a rubber band, I made a genius move; I snapped him with the band and it was war. He tried blocking it, I snapped him. He tried holding my hands back, I snapped him again. For my final maneuver, I held the band up to my face and aimed it for the long shot toward his chest. I had my target in position; everything was set for the perfect hit. In my excitement I pulled back the rubber band, so quickly that I pulled it out of my front fingers resulting in it snapping me in the eye, instead of Jordan in the chest. He laughed, I cried in defeat.   

I've always been known as a forward thinker. I plan everything in advance to the tee- outfits, outings, meals, goals- my life runs on the idea of “okay, now I’m doing this, what am I going to do three steps from now?”  I see what is ahead, and not what is in front of my face.  I am so focused on the path ahead that I don’t notice the wall that I run into while entering the library. Live life in the here and now, the future will happen, eventually. 

Baby heads, texting, and water balloons.

Research papers should not be started at 8pm. As I was frivolously reading about the various types of infant hereditary and congenital diseases I started freaking about the 4% of children who end up with these conditions. That’s such a small number and yet, the odds of my hypothetical future child having one or more of the names on a list freaked me out and I was frantically texting Jordan (the sane person in my life) about how I was never having children because of this tiny little statistic. I was over reacting, and sort of stalling.

Texting delays research, which delays writing, which delays sleep.  I’m a pro at multi tasking.

Rationality goes out the window at 1am. I was also texting my friend AJ from camp. Camp is the highlight of my summer. I’m a sports leader. In sports we play a lot of water games, because what 8-11 year old doesn’t like getting soaked with hoses and pegged with water balloons. A baby with hydrocephalus has an enlarged skull. Their head fills with fluid, especially around the soft spot of the skull. The skin stretches out and becomes transparent, like a water balloon. What is this, filling up a baby head with fluid until it pops, disease? No more peanut butter cups before bed.