Stories From My Youth – Baseball

As an addedum to yesterday’s post, here’s the story of why I stopped playing Little League Baseball. I think my parents don’t agree with me, but I’m pretty confident this is the true reason I quit.

I hated the uniforms.

T-Ball was fine beause you could wear the team shirt and then whatever pants. But the year after that was baseball in the real uniforms. Back in the 80s, that meant the knee high pants with the socks pulled up and colorful stirrup socks over that.

I hated those pants and socks.

I do not like socks pulled up that high or any sort of elastic tight around my calves. And so, in my mind, the best way to not have to wear those again was to quit. And it kills me now when I see baseball players in the long pants style today. If only they had those when I was young.

This, by the way, does make it into my top 3 regrets in life. But that’s a post for another day.

Stories From My Youth

Today I introduce a new category. Pretty self explanatory. Now, we’ve covered several times that I don’t have the best memory. But there are still a few highlights and lowlights that stick with me. And perhaps this first story may go a long way toward explaining the whole memory issue.

In Junior High, I wore braces for 2 years. Let me back up a little further. I think it was in 5th grade where I was offered the choice: wear a retainer for a few years or wear braces. I was all over the retainer – who wants braces? Well, the retainer didn’t work. So I had to wear braces anyway. That may have something to do with why I don’t like dentists.

So, I’m stuck with the brace face through some of the more awkward years of my life.

During one of those days, I was working with something that needed a 9 volt battery. (Yea, you can see where I’m going here)

You know how sometimes on those types of batteries, the connector prongs get spread out and it doesn’t snap together with the connector properly. Well, using my infinite wisdom, I decided that if I bit down on the prongs, I could get the connector back in shape and have a secure snap.

I saw a flash of blue light as I completed the circuit from the battery directly through my metal mouth. I had a headache for quite some time after that, too. Imagine that.

But the battery snap connected just fine … I think. I don’t really remember.