My dearest camp counselor wrote this to me in 1966:

You call me friend, but do you realize how much the name implies?
It means that down through the years, through sunshine and tears,
There’s always someone standing by your heart.
And I would have you know, where ever you may go,
There’s always someone, standing by your heart.

My father once told me: “To have a friend, be a friend.”

Those may seem trite, but I like them both very much and have found that friendship must be based on common interests and values, shared experiences, trust and to some extent, history. There are several people in my life who go back many, many years. I may not see them often, but I know the friendship remains and we could pick up where we left off and nothing will have changed. We can still laugh about things that took place decades ago, worry about the state of things today, mourn the loss of loved ones, share great stories, soothe one another. That is true friendship.

I have this with Patti. We met in 1967 at the beginning of 10th grade. We were in geometry class and Girl’s Choir. We were also involved in the musical that year. it was “Bye, Bye Birdie”. She was the choreographer, I was Randi, Kim’s little “sister”, actually a boy’s role, but was changed for me…at least I got to sing “Kids” and “Hymn for a Sunday Night” (Ed Sullivan…we’re gonna be on Ed Sullivan). The man whom she would marry was the pianist. Quite a fortuitous ensemble. Patti and I went on through two more years of choir (by now the top choir at school), the madrigal group, chemistry class in 12th grade, more musicals, and became close friends. I spent long hours at her welcoming home. Her mother baked and cooked and was always happy to see me. She worked in management at Avon and gave me little gifts for Christmas. If I dig deeply enough in a bottom drawer, I believe I will find a hair brush she gave me one year. Knowing that I was always fascinated by Catholic pageantry, they once invited me to join them for Christmas Midnight Mass. Patti told me to follow her lead and do everything she did, so with wide-eyes, I took it all in and genuflected, and kneeled…until they went to take communion. “Don’t follow”, she warned me. This Jewish girl stayed on her knees.

We went East to college, I to Brandeis, she to Boston University, where she could be close to her boyfriend at Harvard. They came to see me in my shows, I went to their parties. Unlike J, we couldn’t afford to go home for Thanksgiving, so I went to Patti’s apartment in Boston both years she was in town. We had a great time together (as we always do). The first year, she cooked Cornish game hen, the second year, she made turkey with all the fixings. She is a wonderful cook. I have even learned a few dishes from her. I make a good pasta carbonara thanks to Patti. Following our sophomore year, Patti was intent on transferring to Mills College in California, this time J followed her west where they settled. It was more difficult to stay in touch back in the early ’70s, but we saw each other when we were home in Detroit. I attended their wedding, and one year later Patti was one of my two bridesmaids.

I settled in the Boston area, so it became more difficult to see one another, but we took our first trip to the West Coast in 1975 and stayed with them. Other visits followed. Harvard reunions provided opportunities for them to come East. My older son went to Stanford and my younger child moved to the Bay Area after graduating from college, so there have been many more opportunities to get together more recently. Still, between lengthy phone calls and email, the friendship has never waned. After singing the Brahms German Requiem with my community chorus 14 years ago, I couldn’t stop buzzing for days. I called Patti and we talked over an hour about the joy of the experience, something else we now shared.

Patti knows all my secrets, has been there for me during any crisis and I have been able to celebrate many joyous occasions with her. We support each other through thick and thin. We spent a glorious afternoon wandering around the Stanford Mall just last February. We gossiped about old friends, talked about important stuff and nothing substantial at all. Just as old friends will do.

Retrospective

Faith.  Do I have any?  I’m not a believer in an afterlife. I don’t believe in answered prayers.  I don’t believe that there is a higher power looking out for my safety and general well-being.  I wasn’t born for a reason or as part of a plan.

I tried for maybe sixty percent of my 70 years to be Christian and then gave up.  I slipped into Buddhism.  For me it is not a religion.  It is a way of thinking that is peaceful.  There are four truths that make perfect sense and an eight-fold path to follow.  I’m nowhere near the end of that path.  I don’t expect to be.  But I am content being on it.

My Christian path was through three protestant denominations:  church youth groups, college requirements, adult leadership positions, and then nothing.  I still know the words and melodies to a few hundred hymns.  I know the words to creeds, psalms, prayers, and confessions.  I’ve read the entire Bible and some of the possible parts that were rejected when the collection of writings that make up the Bible was assembled.  And I have read church history.

My Christian path was bumpy, but enough of it was good that I stayed on it. There were experiences, friends, lessons in morals and values. And beauty.   I always had questions, doubts, and rejections along the way. And in the end, no belief.

Grandma and the Baptist Church:  From age three to eleven, I went to church with Grandma. In Sunday School, I learned Bible stories. In eleven o’clock service I heard old standard hymns and fire and punishment sermons preached by men with no seminary training who got themselves worked up into rants.  They might start with calm explanations of God’s love, but they ended with shouts, slamming a Bible against their hands and sweating through their shirts after they removed their jackets.  During Sunday dinners, around 1:00 pm, my grandmother praised the inspiration of the preacher’s performance.  “He was feeling the spirit today!”  But I remember remarks such as “I was sure his pants were just going to fall off when he was dancing and stomping around up there.”  No talk of faith except the assurance that God was good and watched out for his people.  That didn’t seem true to me, but I knew not to say that out loud.

Becoming Presbyterian:  By age 12, I was living with my mother and going to church with my friends.  I was happy at the Presbyterian Church.  The church was beautiful:  mountain stone, dark wooden pews, lanterns, and sconces.  An organ in the choir loft, different music, quiet sermons and prayers.  An active youth group with weekly Sunday suppers, with retreats, camps, and theological discussions.  We talked about beliefs, responsibilities, love, kindness.  But, back then, Presbyterians were serious about predestination.  I didn’t like that idea.  Why were all the summer people in our tourist town rich, and we year-round people were not?  Was that the plan?  I said to one of my friends walking home from cheerleading practice one day. “Do you ever feel like an ant in an ant farm?  We are controlled.”  She got very angry and stomped off.

College at a Presbyterian school:  Late 60s.  We were required to take four religion courses.  My first professor seemed bored by the whole thing.  He gave us reading assignments, and we talked about them, but if we were not up to discussing them with any depth or insight, he would talk for awhile and dismiss us early.  At the beginning of the semester, he gave us a single-spaced page summary of the Old Testament.  I memorized it.  When he handed out the exam, it said summarize the summary.  I wrote it out, and he recorded my A.  My second semester professor made assignments in our Gospel Parallels book and insisted that everything was true.  Third semester was about the early church, including geography. The professor believed that the earth was 6000 years old.  The fourth semester was devoted to reading the works of significant church leaders.  I had to confess that I did not finish reading The Confessions of St. Augustine.  I do remember that Augustine was a bishop, and he wrote Confessions in Aleppo. Now Aleppo is destroyed.

We were required to go to chapel four days a week and expected to go to church on Sunday. First Presbyterian was not far away, but we had transportation.  We called it the Vatican, because the church was a huge structure.  The minister was like a very theatrical television preacher with an oily delivery.  One Sunday, I had, what I now know was an anxiety attack, during the sermon.  I slipped out of the sanctuary and then stomped across the school’s nine-hole golf course and back to the dorm.  I switched to Second Presbyterian.

First Marriage, no church:   My first husband did not go to church, and I was fine with that.  Then he met people from the Sunshine Farm, a community of, what should I call them, New Age Christians.  They sang songs they wrote, sometimes accompanied by guitar.  They swayed with their arms in air when they sang, and they spoke in tongues.  They believed that women should be subservient to their husbands.  The members had jobs and built separate homes.  Their leader did not work outside the farm.  I went with my husband a few times, but my resistance grew. One night I reached my limit. I stomped outside and would have gone home, but he had the key to the car.  He came outside to convince me to go back in, but I told him that if he said “Praise the Lord” one more time, I would start screaming.  There were many reasons why the marriage ended, but his religious obsession was a big one.

Graduate School and the Episcopal Church.  Growing up I often went to an Episcopal church with two of my friends.  I loved going there.  Beautiful American Gothic building, prayer books, kneelers, incense, stages of the cross, and short informative inspiring sermons or homilies.  I loved the Rector’s wife.  She and a member of the church provided a space and activities for us town kids every Saturday night for my four years of high school.  We grew up in the Parish Hall.  She was the most “good Christian” person I have ever known.

After my divorce my therapist asked me what I had done or wanted to do before I was married.  One of the things I said was “I wanted to go to an Episcopal church.”  He said, “What’s stopping you?”  So, when I started classes at my grad school located in one of the most beautiful towns in the US, I went to one of the oldest Episcopal churches in the country.  I loved it.  Usually I went to Evensong.  It didn’t matter that I was still an unbeliever.  No one there ever asked me if I were.  I went to confirmation classes and became an Episcopalian.

Married again.  This time to an Episcopalian:  I sang in the choir, I listened to excellent, thoughtful sermons.  I loved the beauty of the building.  I was very involved in the church to the point that I was asked to serve on the Vestry.  The first year I was in charge of social activities.  I loved planning the parties, the dinners, and the pageants. The second year I was asked to be the stewardship chairman.  That was painful.  Convincing people to give or give more was hard.  My third and last year, I was asked to be the Senior Warden.  That was harder.  Church business, church politics, encouraging the Rector, and dealing with concerns and complaints wore me out.  I stopped going to church after the new Warden took over.  Prayers didn’t help me.

New church in a new state.  My husband found a church with an excellent choir.  I lasted a few years, but the new building was half blond wood and half glass.   It reminded me of a restaurant near the town we moved from.  Some of the sermons were interesting, but the ones by the assistants and some deacons made me cringe.  I did not get involved with any of the activities.  I stopped going.

I read more church history and explanations. The Christian church was and often still is cruel, controlling, and cold. It left behind the teachings of a poor itinerant man, and become a grand business even after a reformation. Thomas Jefferson was Deist. I tried that.  I could make up my own religion.  That didn’t last. I read Christopher Hitchens and similar writers.  I know I am an atheist.  My husband accepts that, but it isn’t something I talk about with more than a few friends.

Buddhism and my breakdown:  I started reading Buddhist writings.  I tried meditation, and I started making Buddhist art.  Then I lost it.  I mentally fell apart.  Too many responsibilities, too many classes to teach, both English and art, a kind loving child with learning difficulties who was struggling to finish high school, and a demented mother.  Prayer didn’t help any of that.  When I left the hospital, the psychiatrist there sent me to an excellent therapist whose therapy is based in his Buddhism.  He gave me the Tao Ti Ching.  I knew that I was where I should be. I’m still there.  One wall of the Tibetian store in the closest city has a wall full of books and CD’s that I can buy when I need something more to read and to play when I meditate.  I make my Buddhist art as meditation and sell it in a shop downtown.

So, no, I don’t have any faith, but I do have peace, and what comes after this life is not frightening.

Though always a good student, the arts and literature were my bailiwick. I had to work hard at math and science to get good grades. Thus, when Mr. Perkins, who I had for 7th and 8th grade science, announced that we all had to do a project for the Science Fair, I struggled for an idea.  This was in 1965 and I was a mere 7th grader. We had to put together a visual presentation and report. This would represent a large portion of our grade for that card-marking period (three within the term). I decided to make a model of an atom from clay, wire and push pins with a report to go along. The nuclear age was upon us and this seemed like a good idea. I had never been to a Science Fair and really didn’t know what to expect.

While I am an avid admirer of the visual arts (and have been involved in art museums for years), I am truly not good at creating anything visual or craft-based. I am in awe of those who can. Still, I bought the necessary supplies, read up on the topic and began. It was actually much more difficult than I expected it would be to get the wire to stay in shape, the push pins to pierce the wire to give the desired effect, the clay to stay in shape to represent the nucleus. Nothing hung the way I envisioned it. And I chose hydrogen – a very simple atom. I finally got it all together, made the “booth” out of my father’s shirt cardboards, did my simple report and brought it to the school gym at the appointed time.

I looked around with astonishment. The other projects were much more elaborate. Humiliation seeped into every pore of my body, but it was too late. We left our projects to be judged. Ribbons were awarded. Mine took green; the lowest possible. Eighth grader Jon Polk had worked for a year experimenting with the thyroids of rats. His experiments, documented with the skinned hides of several of his specimens, tacked to the board with growth charts showing how the experiments with the hormone had affected the rats, not only took first place at our school, but went on to win at the district level in Greater Detroit. His was an outstanding effort.

Meanwhile, back in class, Mr. Perkins inquired what happened to me. This was not up to my usual standard and my grade reflected that. Accustomed to getting “A’s”, I was horrified. I acknowledged my error in underestimating the complexity and importance of the assignment (also, my total ineptitude at putting together a decent visual presentation) and asked what forms of extra credit could I do to bring my grade up, which I willing undertook for the rest of the semester. I don’t recall what forms those extra assignments took, but I know I did them diligently (as I always did) and managed to scrape out an “A” for the whole term.

My husband and two kids still talk rings around me. “Tech talk” is the norm when we sit at family meals. I smile vacantly, just pleased that we are all together, and strain to understand what they are discussing. It is a different type of intelligence, I once told my husband, and challenged him to sing an aria or recite a Shakespearean monologue. We all have our own strengths.

I’m writing this because somebody asked me about faith and I don’t have any.
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Faith, for me, is a complicated topic. As I said in an earlier Retrospect story, I mostly don’t believe in God. But for some reason I’m not quite ready to rule out the possibility entirely. For instance, all through my years in school, when I was nervous about an exam, I would talk to God, saying “if I get an A on this exam, I’ll believe in you.” And even now, when I’m on a turbulent flight, I find myself saying “please don’t let this plane crash.” Who am I talking to? I don’t know.

I think I found it hard to believe in God once I learned about the Holocaust, and the pogroms in Russia that caused my ancestors to flee. The entire history of the Jewish people revolves around persecution, and is supposed to show us that God ultimately saved us, by parting the Red Sea, or making Esther the queen of Persia, or whatever. But then why didn’t God stop the Nazis? Or the Cossacks? It didn’t make sense to me.

I never asked my parents if they believed in God, and now it is too late. I’m pretty sure they didn’t though. When I was seven, I started religious school at my temple, which I didn’t love but didn’t hate either. The next year I said I didn’t want to go any more. I think all kids say that, my kids said it multiple times. It’s mainly the having to get up on Sunday mornings that is objectionable, not the content once they get there. Anyway, my parents just said okay fine, you don’t have to go any more. We didn’t even have a discussion about it. Not what I was expecting! I was happy that this meant I could relax on Sunday mornings, go get lox and bagels with my grandfather, just have a lazy day. It wasn’t until many years later that I regretted being a religious-school dropout and wished they had made me keep going. Learning Hebrew is much easier for a young brain than it is for a middle-aged one, as I discovered to my dismay when I tried to study it along with my children as they were preparing for their bat and bar mitzvahs!

I wish I could believe that there is a Heaven, and that my parents are there hangin’ out, and someday I will get to see them again. It would certainly make the idea of death more palatable. But it would take a lot more faith than I can muster to believe that such a place exists.

Regardless of my doubts about God and Heaven, I am very committed to Judaism. I love singing in the temple choir, the beautiful Hebrew prayers set to music (and transliterated, fortunately). I treasure the stories of all the holidays, and the rituals that go with them. The Passover seder, where we eat matzah because there wasn’t time for the bread to rise, and where we splatter red wine on our plates for each of the ten plagues that were visited on Egypt. Purim, where everyone wears costumes, and we act out the story of Esther and Haman, cheering every time Esther’s name is mentioned and booing, hissing, and rattling groggers at every mention of Haman. Lighting the menorah and playing dreidel on Chanukah. Rosh Hashanah, where we dip apples in honey to signify a sweet new year, and we throw bread into the water to signify casting away our sins. Breaking the fast at the end of Yom Kippur, where we joyously consume plates of herring in sour cream with the rest of our temple family.

It does seem like a lot of the tradition is about food. And yes, I do love the food that goes with all the holidays. But even more I love the sense of community I get from my synagogue at home, and from the Jewish people I meet when I travel. Maybe because we have always been a minority, and often a persecuted minority, there is a feeling of kinship with strangers when I discover they are Jewish.

When my mother died in February of this year, it was my temple family who helped me through it (along with my real family, of course, and also my Retrospect family when you gave me such wonderful comments on my story about her, This Story Is Not About Cooking). The rabbi and the cantor both called me to offer their support as soon as they heard the news. I met with the rabbi two days after my mother died when I could barely talk about her without bursting into tears. The rabbi asked me if I wanted to have a shiva service, which would be held within the week after burial, and I said I don’t know, I don’t think I can do anything right now. Then she told me there was something called shloshim, which comes at the end of 30 days of mourning. So eventually I decided to have a shloshim service. I’m so glad I did! The rabbi and cantor both came to my house, along with about 40 other people — choir members, mah jongg players, my book group, the old Girl Scout troop, colleagues from work, and more. We had a beautiful service with music (clarinet, violin, and piano, as well as voices), eulogies (I read my Retrospect story), and poems, and yes, a couple of prayers including, of course, the Kaddish. Performing this ritual, surrounded by people who cared about me, was incredibly healing.

This week is Passover, and it was important to me to have a seder on Monday, the first night. I made my charoset from the same recipe I use every year, a mixture of apples, walnuts, cinnamon, honey, and wine that represents the bricks and mortar used by the Israelites in Egypt. We had the horseradish, the shank bone, the roasted egg, the greens, and the bitter herbs, each in its little compartment on the seder plate. Of course we also had the feminist orange, added after a rabbi 20 years ago allegedly said “Women belong on the bimah as much as an orange belongs on the seder plate.” Sure, we rushed through a lot of the ritual and skipped a bunch of pages in the Haggadah, but we covered the basics. We were slaves in Egypt and now we are free. Sometimes traditions can just be comforting, even if you don’t really have faith.

 

Today I’m thinking about all the women I have worked with. Some have been bosses, many many colleagues, and now I have two women who are my employees (heaven help them). I want to honor the women who taught me how to work:

Cathy, the nurse manager at UCSF who hired me fresh out of nursing school and encouraged me to apply for a promotion and then another one.

Lisa and Lucille at Natus Medical – Lisa who was kind to me when I was pregnant and fought for me when I needed that, and Lucille who showed me how being a woman meant having the biggest brain in the room.

In my job today I am fortunate beyond words to work alongside women who model kindness, ferocity, intelligence, hard work, confidence, respect, loyalty, compassion, collaboration, compromise, strategic thinking, integrity, and humor in the face of — well, in the face of everything. I call them my Pantheon of Stanford Goddesses.

Women who helped me learn to work hard at motherhood and in the domestic sphere hold a special place in my heart, my own mother of course, my extended family, and many friends and neighbors.

A special shout out to working women who aren’t mothers and mothers who “don’t work” (insert hysterical laughter here) and who stood with me while I was living in that complex undifferentiated ambiguous space.

Is there room left for women artists and poets I love? That work is not a hobby, no matter how many times we’ve been told that.

In honor of International Women’s Day, I wear red for you, and my blood flows red for you every day. #IWD

I posted the above thoughts on Facebook on March 8, 2017, In honor of International Women’s Day. Several groups planned events called, variously, “Day Without Women” and “Women’s Strike,” etc, but I didn’t want to miss work. I’m making a difference there after a long time treading the proverbial water, so I wore red along with several of my colleagues, and I kicked some ass (which is what I get to do, now that I’m a Director and all). Ladies with a lot on their minds sometimes are slow to do all the things they love, but it’s never too late to share good news.

 

 

The fact that I am woman of a certain age makes it easier to understand why I never played baseball as a child. I think I would have loved playing growing up, in a sand lot, the way my husband did, but that game is way way over. Our son played Little League for many years, an experience that turned me into a serious fan. (You can listen to me read a poem about the mom-fan years here — last name starts with a B.) Then the San Francisco Giants won the World Series in 2010 and I thought I would lose my mind. Where had I been all my life? Not watching this game that clearly is the best and most fun thing ever.

The first winning season I’m sure there was a second baseman somewhere, but you really couldn’t see much past the pitching that year. Oh Timmy, we hardly knew you.

During the Giant’s second winning season (2012), Marco Scutaro turned me into a Second Baseman Woman. You’ve heard men refer to a man who likes to look at a woman’s legs as “a leg man,” and one who prefers to watch a woman’s wonderful and strong rear end as “an ass man” right?  Well this is like that. I like men who play second base. (And if you are thinking about other kinds of first and second bases, well, that’s not entirely wrong, but not the point of this story!) The agility, the speed, the twisting and unexpected lightning turns in mid air! The jumps and leaps and impossible lunges across the indefinite space between second and first base, not to mention that sexy infield shift move, or all the times they get stepped on defending a steal from first. How many other players routinely get cleats in their shins?? I mean, com’on. And the way they get their uniforms completely dirty from rolling around on top of each other… moan…

Marco Scutaro was my hero of the 2012 season ’cause he was old (for a major league player) and he could crush the ball with RISP and he was just all around awesome with his slightly scruffy chin and soulful eyes. If you watched the last game of the NLCS, you’ll never forget him standing on the field when it was over in the pouring rain like an avenging and very dirty angel.

But he’s retired now, gone the way of many second basemen who wreck their backs with all that twisting and lunging. Thankfully the Giants have Joe Panik, or Joe Baby Panik, as I like to call him, who would be my favorite player these days if it weren’t for Hunter Honey Pence, as I like to call him, or Twitchy Pants when he’s on a roll. And even if Joe is sometimes benched when his back acts up (remember the leaping and sprawling?) there’s the almost more adorable Kelby Tomlinson (think Clark Kent). Here they are, doing some awesome second basemen things.

My son never played second base much. He was a catcher and an outfielder. That’s probably just as well. I don’t think it’s healthy for moms to lust after their sons the way I lust after the men who play second base. Oh my.

The huddled masses make it impossible for me to get anywhere near the hotel’s entrance. Middle-aged women and gay men stand alongside pierced and tattooed teens—necks craned, toes tipped, autograph pens at the ready.
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My best friend Nate Singelton, a wide receiver for the 49rs and I use to run around together a lot and are more like brothers than friends. One weekend after getting back from the driving range Nate asked me if I had a baseball mitt he could use. I asked, “Why in the world would you want to borrow a mitt from me when just last week I saw about 10 brand new mitts in your closet?” He told me some of them were girls mitts and most of them were softball mitts and besides he wanted a mitt that was well broken in. I asked what he needed it for and he told me the Niners were going to play a 3 inning exhibition game against the Giants the following week and so he needed a good mitt. I went into my den and found my “Old faithful” and brought it out and laughed as I said, “Believe me, you don’t want to use this mitt. I have had it since high school and it has a million miles on it.” As I showed him my battle scarred, floppy old mitt. To my surprise he says, “That’s perfect Bro. Let me have it.” I laughed at the thought of my mit being used at Candlestick Park by a pro football star let alone against the San Francisco Giants. He slid it on and slapped it a few times and said it was fine.

That following week I did not get to go to that game because I was out of town so when I got back I asked Nate how it went. He said, “It was prefect. I told you it would be fine and we almost beat the Giants too!” “Really!” I asked. “But there was this one thing that happened.” Nate said. “When we went back into the dugout after our exhibition game was over so the Giants could get on with their game against the team they were playing that day, I was talking to one of the players and Berry Bonds picked up your mitt and put it on. Then he was laughing and asked me, “Hey Singelton, don’t those Niners pay you enough to buy a new mitt? So we were talking for quite a while about things while Bonds had your mitt on.” I took my mitt and put it on and said, “You mean to tell me Bonds had on MY mitt, this very mitt! Did you have him sign it?” Nate laughed and said, “Hey Bro, he didn’t ask me for my autograph and I sure as heck wasn’t going to ask him for his. What was I going to say, “It’s for a friend of mine since I borrowed his mitt? Right.” So to this day when I slid on old faithful I am the only guy (besides Nate) that knows Bonds wore it. Can you hear me with that old ragged mitt telling someone… “Yeah, One day Bonds had my mitt on and…..”

Another one of my favorite baseball memories was growing up in the small coastal town of Bandon Oregon so I never really had a team? I really didn’t know who players were, even when I saw them and didn’t know stats and so on. Well, when I was a young adventuresome guy I came to Palo Alto to further my education and I was working part time in a service station. On several occasions, I had worked on some pretty nice cars for a man that was a friend of my boss. His title was “troubleshooter” and he worked for Chrysler. He would bring in cars to be serviced because he was and old friend and enjoyed doing business with my boss. One of his jobs was to take care of and maintain cars that Chrysler had given to celebrities. One day I was working on a couple of cars that he had brought in before only this time he told me the owners would pick them up when there were ready. Both cars were brand new Chrysler New Yorkers and they were pink with white vinyl tops and upholstery. And listen to this…. They had phones in them but remember this happened way back in 1970! As I continued working on the car, changing the oil and checking everything the owners of the cars came in and as one of them took the keys and left with his the other guy politely said, “Hello, I see the car is not quite ready.” I told him it wouldn’t be much longer but he could talk to me in the shop while I got it ready. It was a cold rainy day and the guy asked, “Hey, do they have hot chocolate over at that restaurant across the street?” When we confirmed they did he went and got a cup for him and one for me. I remember he was a really nice guy and we talked about cars, the weather and so on until his car was all done and he was ready to go. I thanked him for the cocoa and he left. As he was driving away one of my coworkers was watching him leave and he said something strange. That’s when one of the other employees said, “I sure wish I had a nickel for every ball he hit.” Not wanting to feel stupid I just said something like, “Oh yeah…… me too.” Then my coworker said, “You gotta be kidding me… Don’t you know who that was that you were talking to. Don’t tell me you don’t know who the guy that bought you the hot chocolate!” Finally, I gave in and admitted I was not sure who they were and by now all the guys that worked there were grilling me. They asked, “When you checked the spare tire air pressure in the trunk and had to move all the baseball bats, balls and jerseys didn’t you have a clue?” I shook my head no. Then my boss said, “You gotta be kidding. Didn’t the personalized license plate give you a clue?” I went and looked at the invoice to see the license plate. One was “SAY HEY” and the other one was “MAC 44”. And believe it or not they almost fell over backwards when I asked, “What does Say Hey mean and what is Mac 44?” I almost fainted when they told me the man that took his car was Willie Mays and the man that bought me the hot chocolate was Willie McCovey.

When nobody was looking I dove into the trashcan and retrieved my crumpled paper cup from the hot chocolate and still have it to this day.