- 12:00 -
I was back in Lamar, perhaps a bit older than I am now. My baseball buddies that I grew up with had decided to start a competitive softball team for old time’s sake. We had just finished a game and were all hanging around the ball parks reminiscing. Some of the girls who used to watch us were there too — Carissa, Brittney, Lindsay.
We decided to walk through the evergreens that formed a wind break West of the complex, in memory of the time Fos had caught us trying to drive to the park instead of walk. But as we were walking through the trees, the rows seemed to grow longer and the trees themselves bigger. Feeling uneasy, we stuck to the course.
When we came out, it was daylight, and we realized quickly that something strange had happened. The complex looked very different, but not totally unfamiliar. It looked exactly as it had when we were very young–we had somehow gone back in time.
We wandered the fields a bit, awestruck wherever we went. There was a game going on at Merchant’s, so we stopped by to take a look. Jordan recognized some of the high school players on the field, and guessed we had come back to somewhere around 1995. We were about to leave when I noticed Tim May in the stands, and beside him, a very young boy with bleach blonde hair. It was Clay.
I stuck around for a moment as my friends moved on. Eventually, Clay got up from the bleachers and took to wandering the premises. Like a regular old creeper, I followed him. He asked me if I was a baseball player. I said yes. He told me he was going to be a famous baseball player someday. I wanted so badly to tell him that he wouldn’t — that he would die at 15 and he needed to worry instead about not letting that happen, but I couldn’t.
I told him instead that I was sure he’d be a great catcher someday. He wrinkled his nose and replied that he didn’t want to be a catcher–he was a short-stop, through and through. I told him I thought that he’d make a good catcher, and he asked me to show him some things.
I immediately became extremely self-conscious. This required perhaps the most “dream bravery” I have ever needed in order to go ahead. But I went ahead nonetheless, showing Clay the things I learned from watching him myself when we were much older. He took to them quickly.
My friends finally showed back up after wandering a bit. They were as amazed as I was to be standing in front of the younger version of Clay.
“Are you all baseball players?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Are you good?”
“Definitely.”
Clay stared around in childlike admiration of us, his eyes sparkling.
“What do I call you?” he asked. I thought for a moment.
“Kids,” I said finally, remembering Clay’s old calls of encouragement from the dugout. “You call a good baseball player ‘kid.’”
