Anticipation

Back in high school, it took all my will to survive January and February.  The South Side of Chicago may not be on the tundra, but it sure felt that way.  Before Leonardo DiCaprio was even born, I learned how to survive in the wilderness.  For openers, I dressed in layers and never missed the charter bus that our high school.  Otherwise, it was two CTA buses plus a trek through the frozen wastes, at which point there was an afterschool detention waiting for us, followed by a trek and two CTA buses….

The trick was getting to March, at which point things slowly improved.  The snow melted, grudgingly; baseball returned on the radio; and we commenced our wait for The Package.  Friends would call and ask, Did it come?  On the weekend, they’d walk over to my house and help me wait for the mailman, or we’d go out looking for him.  Usually, he delivered it in the middle of the month, a big envelope all the way from Glen Head, New York, wherever in the world that was.  In my teenaged world, spring officially arrived with the new Strat-O-Matic baseball cards.

There were five of us in a league, or leagues, as we usually had more than one during the spring and summer.  At one point or another, I would have the White Sox, Matt the Giants, Bob the Phillies and Frank the Cubs; I can’t remember who Dan picked.  But we all ended up in my basement or on the front porch, rolling dice, changing pitchers and holding onto our pinch hitters in that time before the DH.  Then we turned eighteen, and grownups don’t play games like this.  Actually, they did and do, only then it wasn’t cool to admit it.  We were afraid chicks wouldn’t dig dice and split cards.

This morning it’s gray, with a little snow on the ground.  I could really use the official start of spring about now.  There would be five of us again, not three, all fighting to win the $5 pot that would then be spent on pizza.  March, no less than April, is the cruelest month.