I don’t miss much about the western side of the Cascade Mountains, but I do miss the rain.
It’s raining on my side of the mountains and it’s delightful. Quiet pattering on the metal roof and then a tympanic surge from a change in the wind or a sudden discharge from the bellies of the clouds, drowning out all other sounds, and then it quiets down again. I loved the winter of rain on the west side because it played directly to my desire to be indoors.
And, when I was compelled to be outdoors for exercise or necessities, I could commend myself for enduring the wet and the damp and the chill. Braving the elements, as it were. Strange how I adapted so well to that aspect of the Pacific Northwest - or as my high school girlfriend’s disagreeable father liked to put it - the Great North Woods, because I’ve never adapted to the water temperatures.
The greys, the clouds, the always present rain suited me just fine. All the more reason to restart Infinite Jest, or stretch out the coffee ritual, or find something interesting, to me, to do online.
I’m an unrepentant and unapologetic video gamer and - here’s the best justification I can come up with - it feeds my need to be competitive. I have another justification but it’s merely conjecture. I am hoping the mental complexities of the games I choose help me to stave off losing my mind.
But, if I do end up losing my mind, I am hoping I won’t forget how to get by in a virtual world full of sharp colors, novel characters, bells, whistles and rewards. I am hoping I can be propped up in a corner somewhere and I can play to my heart’s content.
And, if not video games, hopefully crossword puzzles or jigsaw puzzles.
As for the competitive part, with a ravaged right shoulder that a prominent Seattle sports injury doc shrugged off as the onset of getting older (and that was almost two decades ago!) and an ongoing concern about tearing, breaking or spraining various parts of my anatomy, the list of things I can be competitive about has shrunk.
My physical competitive urges have declined dramatically, but those mental competitive juices occasionally come to the fore. Video games are a good way to release those inclinations. And nobody gets hurt. Especially me.
What I miss the most is slow pitch softball.
If I were the sort of batter who could jack a home run over the centerfield fence every third time at bat, I would still be playing. But I was never that type of slow pitch player. My game was finesse and I liked to pitch. But, in order to pitch, you had to field and then throw an overhand strike to one of the bases.
And that is how I did well at horseshoes when the shoulder started balking on me.
My friend, Gary, who I wrote about in The Ever Affable Gary, and who lost his fight with cancer earlier this summer, may he rest in both peace and power, introduced me to horseshoes on a long and winding flat water river trip. I never thought much about the gentleman’s activity other than it was ideal for a river with flat sandy beaches and you could fling a horseshoe with one hand while still nursing a beer with the other. When we failed to remember to bring horseshoes, beer cans, filled with wet sand tossed from the same distance as horseshoes into buried five gallon buckets, worked just as well.
And provided yet another reason to have another beer.
Eventually, after my shoulder failed me due to decades of persistent abuse, and softball was no longer an option, I started focusing on the intricacies of the game of horseshoes. Because of my experience pitching in slow pitch softball, my accuracy with horseshoes was accurate enough to win most backyard contests. I had trouble throwing ringers (which are 3 points) but I had no trouble pitching the shoes close enough to the post to earn one or two points every time. Provided my opponent didn’t toss a ringer.
Once I was over the age of 50, I was able to participate in the Huntsman World Senior Games held in St. George, Utah, which my middle brother, Bill, had been attending for several years with his softball team. I signed on for the horseshoe competition and found myself spending several mornings in a row with septuagenarians and octogenarians schooling me in how to compete in horseshoes, the etiquette of horseshoes and the history of the game.
Over the years since, I steadily improved. Built my own horseshoe pit. Bought more than one pair of fancy, pricey horseshoes. Learned to throw the occasional ringer. May have even medaled once or twice at the pay-to-play Senior Game competition. It was a good, active, wholesome competitive outlet for me.
Does anyone remember the Yankee second baseman, Chuck Knoblauch?
One season, after many previous seasons when he had been an All-Star in major league baseball, he started being incapable of throwing a ball accurately from his fielding position at second base to first. Here’s a description I found:
New York Yankees second baseman Chuck Knoblauch was a Rookie of the Year, won several World Series rings and went to four all-star games. But after all those achievements, Knoblauch started having problems throwing the ball to first base, a routine and relatively simple task for any second baseman.
In 1999 he had a total of 26 errors. And, apparently, one of his wild throws from second base hit Keith Olberman's mom in the face as she watched the game from the stands. The yips know no bounds. Like other cases of the yips, there was no real explanation for Knoblauch's loss of throwing ability. After changing positions a few times, Knoblauch eventually retired from baseball in 2003. During his 12 seasons as a professional baseball player he earned a Gold Glove and Silver Slugger, among his other achievements.
The yips are not all that uncommon. That was taken from a website titled, The 5 Worst Cases of Yips in Baseball.
I played baseball or softball from the age of 8 until I was in my late 40s. I never once had the yips. I prided myself in being laser accurate with my throws and I remember a game where I threw a strike from centerfield to home plate.
Well, it happened to me at the World Senior Games while competing in horseshoes during the playoff rounds of doubles. Suddenly, I couldn’t find the horseshoe pit if my life depended on it. Which was remarkably dangerous because when I missed the soft pit of moistened red clay I’d either bang against the wooden backboard, bounce impotently off the mat in front of the pit or clang erratically off the cement to either side causing my doubles partner and his opponent to seek refuge behind the chain link fence.
I’d gone from never being further than two feet from the post on any toss, to never being sure where the few pounds of molded metal was going to land.
That was my last horseshoe competition.
So far, I’ve never had the yips playing video games.
I think that’s rain I hear on the roof. I’ll get back to more serious topics tomorrow.
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AAR Nancy Enz Lill sent a suggestion to me last night that I immediately watched and highly recommend. It is incredibly timely. It’s called What The Constitution Means to Me by one-time Wenatchee, Washington resident, Heidi Schreck, and before you wave it off, you need to realize Heidi is now a well-renowned scriptwriter who has written for Billions, Nurse Jackie and Bad Behavior. It began as a Broadway play and it is the filmed version of that play and you can find it on Amazon Prime. I strongly suggest you stay until the ending.
Also, in light of today’s news, I am also going to suggest Borat 2. (Did you ever watch the outtakes of Borat? “And what is this? Cheese. And what is this? Cheese. This? Cheese.)
Sacha Baron Cohen is crass and his schtick can get old quickly but he is doing us a great service by shining a light on just how insipidly stupid, corrupt and immoral people we put on a pedestal can be. Heidi Schreck does something similar but far more tasteful in her play.