I am an old man because most of my younger friends have grown up on me.

Yesterday Rennie saw me in the yard, stopped and we chatted. He was visiting his parents.

He was one of the baseball players that helped hide me out when I hit the home run through the old grouch's window. He must be 30 something now with a wife and kids.

When I meet my maker and need a character reference to get in I'm going to point out to St. Peter that the kids in the neighborhood refused to rat me out after I hit that homer that broke the grouch's window. That's gotta be good for something.

It was good seeing Rennie and I asked about Dave. Last he heard, Dave was living in Michigan somewhere and working in some kind of a forestry/game management kind of guy. 

Dave was the one I bailed out. When the kids didn't rat me out, Dave's dad got all worked up about it and tried to punish him severely. My neighbor and I paid his dad a little visit and got him off the hook. 

None of the kids ever said anything until the old grouch passed and when he was gone a few of us had a good laugh about the bottom of the ninth the bases were loaded winning homer.

Another kid I used to play with is grown up. 

One time I was talking to a group of people and as I was finishing, the kid came up to me in front of everyone and said, "Hey, Dad! Can we go to that place we went to again? All of those naked ladies were real nice to me."

I miss him. We used to bounce off of each other. His real father once said he knew he should have pulled us apart but didn't because he wanted to see what was going to happen next.

I recently told a kid in his very early teens that there really isn't a whole lot of difference between a young man and an old one. We still like to have fun. I took him for an evening ride through the twisties in the Miata the other night and we grabbed a doughnut together at Dunkin'.

I treat young men like that as equals because as I age I have found there really isn't much difference between a guy of twelve and a guy of sixty-four. Once they hit their twenties we're ALL the same age.

When I was a kid sometimes a dad with a day off would join our baseball games. The dads would sometimes teach us a few things. I was lucky in that I got to be able to do this a few years back. It was just plain fun.

In this day and age I suppose that's pretty much out of the question. Times have changed for the worse. For one thing you don't see kids playing ball in the vacant lot anymore. For another thing, an older man playing ball with them would draw all kinds of unwanted attention. People would want to know what was wrong with him instead of approving of a guy doing what he is supposed to do.

I am an old man now and don't have anyone to play with except for a couple of old grouchy guys that drink too much.

It's kind of a waste because I feel I have something to contribute but there really isn't any way I can.

It's sad.
















To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY