With the passing of Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks, as much as I thought he seemed like a nice guy, I don’t recall ever seeing, or reading, in the social media world, such an outpouring of support and kindness for a person. I’m sure there are some “Glad he’s gone,” posts somewhere, but it seemed everyone loved the guy, or at least respected his contribution to baseball. Sure, there were the normal, celebrity remembrances, but across my Facebook friends, people I grew up with in Ohio whom I wouldn’t have imagined really knew who he was, were there posting “Rest in Peace” comments, “He will be missed,” and even the White Sox fans, who are supposed to despise with all of their being anything Cub, had nice things to say. The other thing? Most of them had an Ernie Banks story. There were the stories of meeting him at a Cubs Convention, in an airport, on the street, and I’m sure there was someone regaling to his friends how he took a pee next to Ernie Banks in a bathroom somewhere.
And yes, even I have an Ernie Banks story.
I never did meet the man, though from everything everyone has posted I’m sure he would have been nice to me, but my story relates to his statue that is currently being tidied up for the next Cubs season and not available for fans to lay flowers, or other mementos, out of respect for him. It was back in 2008, another Cubs Opening Day with kind of crappy weather, but it was the official unveiling of the Ernie Banks statue. I wrote about it in a blog post at the time, and remember it to this day, because his saying, “Let’s play two!”, was synonymous with Cubs baseball, was spelled wrong. There, for eternity, or at least until it could be corrected, on the base of the statue, was an English teacher’s nightmare, “Lets play two.” Silly me, I didn’t take a picture of it, instead just some pictures of the crappy weather, but it’s one of those thing you look at and might wonder “Is that correct? I mean, it’s on the statue?” Sure enough, the apostrophe was added, all was right with the Ernie Banks legacy, and me, I at least have the story of seeing his statue with “Let’s” engraved incorrectly.
I’ll admit I’m not always the best at my own editing, that I’ll miss an apostrophe or two, but there’s my Ernie Banks story. It’s not much, and I do wish I would have met him I suppose, but I also wonder: Do you have an Ernie Banks story?
That’s it for this one! L8R!!
Growing up, well, I suppose not even growing up but just back at home at the old homestead, my mom had all kinds of crap stuck to the refrigerator. Schedules, appointments, maybe the occasional report card, hell, I don’t really remember it all, I just remember there was a lot of stuff on there. It was her version of the pocket organizer, only it involved a lot of magnets and a lovely, brown, refrigerator. Refrigerators have come a long way since then, especially in color (good luck finding a brown refrigerator on the floor of your local appliance store), as well in features, but one thing that still seems to be sort of a status quo, at least for people I know is there is stuff stuck to them.
I know some of the new stainless refrigerators won’t let magnets stick, but there are tons of ways to get around that with a variety of sticky solutions to the posting of your child’s latest artwork. Our current refrigerator is also a kind of hodgepodge of stuff (and my wife might kill me for posting the picture), but it includes a little magnet of Chicago, some magnets of vegetables, a nice saying about God, and a giant calendar we received from our local church, complete with an advertisement for a funeral home to remind of our final destination that will come eventually. There are also these magnetic hooks that aren’t really strong enough to hold much, yet there they are, but oddly none of the photos she had up at our old house made the move, or at least made it up on the refrigerator yet.
Think about your best friend, your wife, your sibling. You like them, don’t you? You probably generally like to be around them? Now picture being attached to them, and I’m not talking emotionally, but physically attached, kind of around the butt area, for 60 years. Granted you didn’t start out that way, but Daisy and Violet Hilton were born, as conjoined twins, and “Bound By Flesh” gives a fascinating, yet kind of sad look at the ladies who had fame, sort of, but because of the people around them had nothing, really, but each other.
I’ll admit the title of this “Andy Wonders” is a little bit of an exaggeration, but it occurred to me the other day when I was shopping at Target that most everyone has gotten caught shoplifting, or nearly everyone at least in the eyes of the scanners that sound off an alarm when you leave the store if the anti-shoplifting tag hasn’t been de-activated properly. I know it’s happened to me. Sometimes it has happened when I bagged my own stuff at the store, which of course makes me wonder if I did forget to scan something, and then there are the times when it happens after I go to a real, live check-out person, and I’m pissed that either they A) Didn’t scan something and that makes me a shoplifter, or B) They didn’t deactivate the anti-shoplifting tag thereby having everyone look at me as I’m leaving the store thinking I’ve just stolen the latest Taylor Swift CD or porterhouse steak.
There I found myself, about twenty to thirty feet behind two girls as they were leaving, and the alarm sounded as they were leaving the store. Rather than act like 99.9999% of every human being, these two girls actually stopped in their tracks, turned around, and I heard the one girl tell the other “We have to go back to see if they forgot to scan something.” I wasn’t sure if I was proud of the girl for her honesty, guilty because I know I would have just kept walking, or mystified at their decision to verify their purchase.
No Photoshop. No digital editing. Just a couple of magazines, someone with a weird curiosity, and old-school cutting-and-pasting. There on the table were the magazines and my quick glance brought me Taylor Swift on the cover of Time, and Tony Robbins on the cover of Fortune. A second glance, and then the coffee nearly came out of my nose as I saw the change, laughed out loud, and wondered if either Taylor or Tony would have the career they have if they had a different mouth.
Every now and then for lunch, especially when the household is out of things like chicken breast, ham, or maybe even a leftover from dinner the night before, we break out the peanut butter and jelly. It might seem odd coming from a 40something year old dude, but I still like the standard peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The fact even came up with someone when they asked what I had for lunch one day, and I told them a PB&J sandwich. He initially looked at me like I was crazy, like how could you be having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at your age, but then you could see the look on his face that it sounded refreshing and different, with almost a hint of jealousy that I was enjoying the tasty mix of the creamy peanut butter with the sweetness of the jelly.
So the other day was the 25th of October which means Christmas is now less than two months away. I’m already seeing stories on Facebook about stores that won’t be open on Thanksgiving to kick off the shopping season, and even though I do have my question of their validity, I’m too tired of “Snoping” everything for people when they keep sharing stuff that sounds odd, but with the simple thought that “It sounds good enough for me I’ll share it anyway even if there is not chance Bill Gates will give me money.” Then of course there is the opposite story, the ones how “Store X is the Devil because they will be open on Thanksgiving.”