We took the kids to the local minor league ballpark last night. Perhaps it was just my mood, but I am starting to think that my next career will be as a recluse. There was a ballgame, but unless you sat in the first three or four rows your view was bound to be interrupted by the hordes of people milling around, including some children who apparently had springs in their butts and who spent most of the game standing in front of us. From time to time--when the losing home team had a chance to stage a rally--the stadium TV screen would flash the word "NOISE" (my five-year-old would whimper and cover her ears, and I saw other children doing the same) and the crowd would obediently scream. This struck me as weird: are we such sheep these days that we have to be told when to yell encouragement? Apparently, yes. Since so few people were actually watching the game, reminders were definitely in order. A foul ball hit and injured somebody who wasn't paying attention. Meanwhile, the kids were clamoring to go to the play area, which featured a carousel, a moon bounce and several other attractions--which was fine; there was no way my five-year-old was going to watch a ballgame, and I expected to have to entertain her. But standing in the crowd, I kept noticing that these days people seem to come in one of two body types: abnormally thin, or pudgy/fat. Our relationship with food is out of control, and I'm a good example: I ate a chocolate ice cream cone I didn't even really want, because....well, they were there. The kids both had slushies (at $4 each) and my nine-year-old had a hot fudge sundae; my husband had a beer in addition to an ice cream cone.
And each time "NOISE" appeared on the screen, more obedient screaming--and screaming, also, when between innings they came out with an air cannon and sent free T-shirts hurtling into the stands. People were leaping for t-shirts the way captive seals leap after raw fish. I've had one of those t-shirts: they're thin cotton/polyester, stingy in size and poorly made. Yet you'd have thought they were U.S. savings bonds the way people carried on.
I am feeling curmudgeonly today, I guess. What is life, without senseless excess from time to time? The kids, at least, had fun.