"You always look like you're coming from a run."
I look up with a grin.
My friend Andrew from our soccer team nods at my trail-running pack.
"Actually, I am," I tell him. "But only by the water on the bike path."
We're at the park across the street from where I live. This is where we usually play pickup, but youth sports have completely overrun the place. So, instead, a group of us are on the baseball diamond. And we're here to play kickball.
It's cool enough that most of us are wearing hoodies, but warm enough that plenty are wearing shorts, too (myself included). I don't know the last time I stood on a baseball diamond. Hell, I can't remember the last time I played kickball, either. It was probably at summer camp as a kid... we played a lottt of kickball. The tinny sound of a big rubber ball getting smacked always makes me think of that place. Once we were old enough, that initial thwackkk was often followed by a crisp thud as the ball ricocheted off of the wooden wall in the outfield. It was made to look like a mini Fenway Park so the walls were painted green and the left-field fence was taller than the rest to mimic the Green Monster.
There's no fence here.
And rather than a group of twenty or thirty twelve-year-old boys, there's a mix of twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings going over the rules and getting ready to throw down. Dan and Paige decide to be on separate teams so they can take turns holding the baby. Smart. Looking out over the field, I squish my shoes into the gravel and take my place at third.
Hooligans, the lot of them. Well, ok, and me...
But I sure am grateful.
I give a half chuckle and take a deep breath. God, we had it so easy as kids... just show up to a place where the whole point is to play some games. Shaking my head, I smile and then find myself nodding to no one and, yet, somehow to everyone.
Kickball, huh?
Whodathunk.
* * *
What's your lawn-game of choice? Who's your crew?
onward.
For more on this daily column, read the backstory here. And if you know someone who'd appreciate this, pass it along.