HISTORY AND GAMES

Making new friends is always fun, but there's nothing quite like being around someone with whom you have a shared history. This past weekend we were fortunate enough to share John's birthday festivities with people such as this.

My cousin Cindy is like my Ghost of Christmas Past. We recently reconnected at my mother's funeral, after many years of us both hopping around the world at the beck and call of our husbands' careers. She shared my childhood history, and was a feature player in all my very best memories of that era. Paula and Tim, on the other hand, didn't walk into our lives until just after we married, but they have been helping us to make memories ever since.

Tim is what you might call a sports fanatic - but a classy one. You're never gonna find him at a game with his face painted and his beer gut hanging out (for one thing, he would never, ever allow himself to get a beer gut in the first place!), but you're never going to walk into his house and not find some kind of game on the TV, either. Doesn't matter what sport it is, he loves them all, and has probably coached them all, too. But if he had to pick a favorite, it would surely be baseball.

Now, Cousin Cindy's husband Keith just happens to be a retired baseball player (Phillies and Cubs, I believe) who now is the radio announcer for UT ballgames. We have often thought that it might be kind of fun to get those two guys together sometime, and this weekend, I finally pulled it off! Sure enough, the conversation was about ten notches above lively over dinner Friday night, and my John was happy as a clam, doing what he does best - just listening... watching... grinning... occasionally laughing till he cried - the perfect audience for guys like Keith and Tim!

It was a perfect evening all around. Well, except maybe for that part back at the hotel later on, when I turned to Tim and John and said "I take it there's some big important game coming up for UT? Keith mentioned that they were headed out to California for something." The guys (heck, even Paula!) turned on me with matching looks of horror on their faces, rolling their eyes in disgust that anyone could be so oblivious to what was going on in the world of games - especially when it comes to their own alma mater!

Hey, cut it out! Not you, too? C'mon, I like games. In fact, I'm quite good at them - Rummy Cube, Sudoku, Crosswords, Shanghai... and I promise to start paying very close attention to those games on TV, just as soon as John deigns to join us at the card table, whenever my family gets together. I mean, fair is fair, right?