Dispatch from Suburbia

(Readers with pronounced visceral objections to suburbia might want to skip this post.)

This weekend we went to the first minor-league game of the year, which is always a glorious and welcome event. As regular readers know, I consider minor league games one of life's great pleasures. For eight bucks a seat, we were about eight rows from the field, closer to home plate than to third base. (By contrast, the New York Yankees attempted to sell comparable seats for $5,000 each this year. I'll admit some schadenfreude when that plan crashed and burned.) The home team was victorious, the hot dogs cheap, the fries crispy, the weather glorious, and the parking easy. One of TB's classmates was there, too, so TB and his friend spent most of the game clowning around with each other, which is as it should be.

Actual exchange between The Wife and me, about halfway through the game:

TW: That pitcher has really long legs!

(pause)

DD: I think you and I watch the game differently.

Inspired by the example, TB and I spent the next morning playing catch in the backyard. Catching a baseball is about the only athletic skill I actually possess, so I gloried in my unaccustomed competence as I taught him which part of the mitt to use, and how to block a grounder with his body. We both had fun, him in the learning and me in the sense of passing something along. My grandpa played semi-pro ball in his youth, and I remember him trying valiantly to teach me to pitch. It didn't work, but I enjoyed the attempt, and I think that's about where TB and I are now. There's something comforting in that.

Sunday afternoon was devoted to car shopping. TW's car is eight years old and showing its age, and we have some travel coming, so it was finally time. (We both subscribe to the “buy it new and drive it into the ground” school.) I'd been doing some background research for about the last six months – 'nerd' plus 'internet' plus 'well-honed procastination skills' equals six months, apparently -- but this time we bit the bullet and actually went to a dealer.

The first part of our decisionmaking process went like this:

DD: Chryslers and Chevys suck, so they're out.

TW: I don't like Fords.

So, off to Honda we went. I mention this just to shed some light on the whole 'bailout' thing. None of the big three was even in the running. Until they are, I just see the bailouts as throwing good money after bad. “We must save them, or the Sebring will be no more!” I see the situation, but I don't see the problem.

Apparently, it's very much a buyer's market for cars right now. I've never been terribly adept at dealing with salespeople in the past, but this time they were falling all over themselves to make the sale. Simply 'looking vaguely uncomfortable' became a successful negotiating tactic. Just tell them you're off to another dealer to comparison-shop, and watch the price drop. I'd never seen anything like it.

For TB and TG, of course, cars in a showroom are basically jungle gyms. They immediately gravitated to the gargantuan SUV, taking turns pretending to drive while TW and I pantomimed being run over. Somehow there's nothing funnier to a four-year-old girl than sitting behind the wheel of an SUV the size of my grad school apartment, watching Mommy and Daddy silently scream in terror before flopping on the hood. I hope she doesn't recall the scene in some future therapy session.

Returning home, TB went to work on his diorama of the South Pole, complete with styrofoam glaciers and two-tone clay penguins.

Thus concludes this week's dispatch from suburbia. Tomorrow, we return to our regularly scheduled ironic detachment.