I got to thinking about all the things I spend (waste) my money on; things that are here today and gone tomorrow. Money spent on “stuff” that doesn’t last. Then there are those things that you spend money on that give you pleasure and joy and memories for a long time.
I thought that my best expenditure this Summer was the $300.00 sailboat. I have had a blast with it for several weekends. My shipmates have included Kaeleigh, who screamed every time we tacked, and then said “do it again”, Dawn who sunned herself in the bow and managed to snap a picture of me as I fell out of the boat near the launch, and Ben, who handled the rudder while I trimmed the sails. Even Matilda the Sailor Dog went for a sail with her happy little PFD on.
The SS Minnow has to take second place to the trip to Boston on 9-11-2009 with my dad. He had his 79th birthday this August, the last one he plans to acknowledge. He doesn’t want people to know when he is 80.
While considering what to get him for his birthday (which gift card would most utilitarian) Dawn suggested, “Why don’t you take him to a Sox game?”
That turne
d out to be a great idea. A trip to Ace ticket online and I had two grandstand seats off of the third base line.
Luck being what it is, the forecast was for rain for the first time in four weeks. We got to the game in time for the first pitch and watched Tampa Bay load the bases before the gane was called on account of monsoons. We sat under the grandstands for 3 hours before they finally called it.
That is the short story. The longer story involves driving HIM into Boston like he used to drive me when I was 10 years old. He doesn’t do so well with directions these days and was surprised that I got him to Haymarket Square without the GPS.
I got to show him the Zakum Bridge for the first time, comparing it to the Bunker Hill Monument across the city. Then through the Big Dig tunnel (“your mother would hate this”) and to the parking garage.
He took his first ride on the T’s Green Line where we saw all sorts of people, including a woman that I knew from Bennington, NH (“You can’t get away with anything; you know people everywhere.”)
At the park, the seats were great, the beer was cold, and the mens room was clean (“Nice. They got rid of the troughs.”) Two outs in the top of the first and they delayed the game. The next three hours were spent make small and big talk. The strangest stuff he has seen rolling through the toll booths. How hard it was to spend his birthday without his twin brother and how his class reunion has more people not attending than attending, for obvious reasons. How he misses the people he met RVing, but not repairing the RV.
We ate Fenway Franks and the saltiest popcorn ever. We tried to schmooze the rain date tickets from the people we sat next to get to take mom, but they came up with a plan to be able to attend and still make their flight back to Idaho. We walked down to the nearly empty box seats to get picture with the Citgo sign but had to settle for the Monstah.
When they announced that the game would resume on Sunday, his eyes lit up. “I have Sunday off. I can go!” We got to experience the crush of after-game-subways and the 110% humidity in the trains. His biggest laugh was from a panhandler who said: “Hey buddy, how about giving just me some cash; I have run out of lame excuses.”
When we got home at midnight he told me it was a really great time and he looked forward to Sunday to do it again.
Sure beats a gift card to Wal-Mart.