I fell asleep on the couch upstairs watching an old episode of Family Ties. I was exhausted. The Keaton family had traveled to England, and Alex was taking classes at Oxford. It made me want to travel there too. Or, I guessed anywhere that would take me away from “all things Hansen.”
I looked up at the clock on the wall and realized I only had fifteen minutes to get to baseball practice. Luckily it only took about five minutes to jog down to the park. I threw on my cleats, grabbed my glove and breezed out the back door. I made it to the park with time to spare. I walked past Coach Swenson as he was bent over pulling out bats and balls from the dusty canvas bag. “Hey, Tim. How are you doing?” he asked as I walked by him. He never even looked at me. I wasn’t even sure how he knew I was there.
“Hey, Coach,” I replied a bit surprised. “I’m good, thanks.” Coach Swenson was a nice guy. I wasn’t sure how much he really knew about baseball though. Johnny Swenson was his son and he was on our team. I think that’s why Mr. Swenson was our coach, not because he was a former major leaguer or anything like that.
Johnny Swenson. The name just oozed athlete. If there was a movie made about a high school football star or baseball player, Johnny Swenson might be his name. Unfortunately for Johnny’s sake, the name was all he got. He was the worst player on our team, which was really saying something. In fact, he only got in a couple of innings per game out in right field, and his dad was the coach.
I’d never forget the time Johnny caught a ball. When I said “a ball” I meant that literally. He caught one ball the entire season. It was toward the end of the game and we were losing to the first-place team by nine runs, which wasn’t too bad—at least it was single digits. A fly ball had been hit out to right field. It may have been in the air for four or five minutes. Johnny stuck his glove up above his head as if to shield himself from a bomb. Not only did he protect himself, but the bomb actually dropped right into his glove, to his surprise. He glanced at the ball and smiled. The celebration would have to wait though because there were runners on second and third and they were both tagging.
“Johnny! Throw it home!” I yelled. Let’s just say that Johnny had never been in that situation before, so instead of actually throwing it home he started to run. Man, was he running. He was running toward home plate. He was trying to beat the base runners to home plate without throwing the ball. Needless to say, Johnny did not beat them home. In fact, he never made it to home. He tripped over first base, fell flat, and watched helplessly as the ball trickled out of his glove.
No one moved for what seemed like an hour. Johnny hopped up and trotted back to right field and the whole crowd cheered. After all, he had caught the ball.
I saw Seth warming up with Daron Madison. Daron played shortstop on our team and was one of the few guys we could count on to not screw up. Seth wasn’t a great baseball player, but he was better than I was. My dad had tried to help me get better, but I spent a lot of time playing catch or home run derby with Seth over the years, and even though I still sucked, a lot of the improvement I had made I owed to him. He had always been pretty patient with me on the field, even if he wasn’t in other ways. I walked over to both of them. “Hey, guys. Can I warm up with you?”
“Yeah, man,” said Daron. Seth backed up a little, making room for me to join them. I could always count on him to warm up with me. We formed a triangle and tossed the ball back and forth.
It had been about five minutes when finally Seth spoke up. “So, what’s this about you and Nicole Thompson?” he asked, a smirk on his face.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“You guys going out or something?”
“Where d’you hear that?”
At that point Daron was listening and smiling, apparently enjoying the drama.
“I don’t know. It’s just going around.”
I then remembered that Nicole got my email address from Seth.
That was seventh grade. Nicole and I had emailed each other one time, never actually had a conversation, at least not recently, and yet, rumors were flying that we were “going out.” Seth was not the guy I wanted to spread those rumors either. Who knew what might come out of his mouth?
“No, there’s nothing going on between me and her. Trust me.” I didn’t mention about the email or my trying my best to avoid her that day. Seth didn’t need any fuel for the fire as far as I was concerned.
“All right,” he said a bit sarcastically. Daron laughed. Seth obviously didn’t believe me.
I didn’t even know exactly what “going out” meant. Generally, in the deep relationships of thirteen-year-olds it meant going to the mall or a movie with about five or six friends and meeting five or six girls there, one of which might or might not be the girl the guy was “going out” with. If she was there the two might share a few brief words, but most of the time was spent getting made fun of by your friends for not kissing her or for not sitting next to her at the movie. So, I wasn’t sure who came up with the term “going out” because it was very misleading. But if Nicole and I were “going out,” no one had bothered to tell me.