Wild Horse

Excerpt from Joel Schnoor’s new book, “Saving Arapahoe.”

RBD and PD

According to the Michael J. Fox foundation, RBD (REM Sleep Behavior Disorder) can be an early warning sign of PD. RBD may include things like violent body movement, nightmares / disturbing dreams, and/or not even reaching the deep sleep level.

I’m in my 25th year since being diagnosed at the age of 38. I honestly don’t know, or don’t remember, whether I had any sleep problems before the diagnosis, but I do know that probably 90% of the time I’m not even aware that anything happened.

My wife has gotten pretty good at identifying early signals of an upcoming event and she quiets me before I do whatever it was I was going to do.

I have dived off the bed several times, chasing (or trying to escape from) an enemy. I have screamed many, many times, often to the frightening of any visitors in the house. I’ve gotten bruised and/or sliced up when diving onto nearby furniture.

I knocked down my floor-to-ceiling lamp one night when it must have occurred to me that it would make a perfect spear to throw across the room. My spouse wasn’t too pleased with that.

She also says I pummel her at times, something that makes neither of us proud.

Finally (this is the last bad story for now), about a year ago I had a week of hallucinations (in January of 2023). It’s apparently the case that the longer you have PD, the more critical it is that your body gets exactly the amount it needs.

I’ve been wearing a dopamine (well, carbodopa / levodopa) pump for about four years as part of a clinical trial for ABBVie-951. (that’s going very well and you can read about it in this blog journal). The pump has three flow settings for me; a flow rate of 0.53, a rate of 0.49, and a rate of 0.47. (sorry, I’m drawing a blank on the units …. it’s a measure of milliliters per some period of time). For the past four years, I’ve spent daytime at 0.53 and then cut down to 0.47 at night, since I won’t need quite as much dopamine at night when I’m inactive. My neuro suggested I try a slightly higher flow setting at night just to see if it helps with RBD (the hypothesis being that maybe I wasn’t getting enough dopamine at night). I bumped it up to 0.53 at night and that turned out to be too much. It was an awful week that ended up in one big hallucination.

I’ll write more about the hallucinations in a separate post. I’m hesitant to let my brain go back there to dwell on it. It was scary stuff. It still shocks me to think that something so bizarre, something that goes against totally what I think is true and real, can be thought of as logical and “well that’s just the way it is.”

Anyway, four years ago I spent a full week at a research lab in Raleigh where they determined the exact amount of dopamine my body needs (or could process). That number was 0.53. And today, that’s the number that still works for me. I don’t know if that means the number has stabilized or if it’s always been 0.53. I don’t know. But I”m happy I haven’t had to increase it yet. My understanding is that more carbo/levodopa (which converts to dopamine) can cause more dyskinesia (jerkiness, twitching, unusual body movements) and, apparently, possibly, things like hallucinations.

I was going to add something else … oh yes, sleep studies.

I’ve been two sleep studies in the past four years. In both studies, I was told that I got between one and one-and-one-half hours of actual sleep during the night and there was almost no deep sleep. Maybe that’s why I feel so tired so often. 🙂

Cheers, y’all

Moonlight

I am listening this morning to some of Beethoven’s Sonatas as performed by Artur Schnabel. He’s really quite good. He started off with Moonlight Sonata. Beethoven named this “sonata quasi una fantasia,” and it was his 14th piano sonata, Op. 27, No. 2, written in C# Minor. What a beautiful piece of music to wake up to!

I used to play Moonlight — maybe twenty years ago — but I got out of the piano practice habit for a while. Now I’m back to it, trying to relearn it. It’s hard! My fingers don’t move to muscle memory as much as I thought they would. But there is a little muscle memory rfemaining. If I close my eyes and just let it flow, sometimes those twenty years come back as though I were transported in time. I’m also planning on picking up Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique, which I had begun working on way back then too.

And I’m also relearning Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C# Minor, a dramatic and really fun piece to play. While I’m at it, I’m also brushing up my rendition of Gershwin’s three preludes, fine-tuning the second prelude, re-learning the third, and then learning for the first time the first prelude. Oh, there was a Chopin Pollinaise I used to play, and I’d like to relearn that. Actually, I think I just had the first three lines down, haha. Guess I’ll need to work harder on that one.

But there’s just not enough time! I’ve shunned my tuba for the past 6 months. They say you lose it if you don’t use it. Right now I’m having a heck of a time getting into the lower registers. I can’t get my lips loosened or pliable enough. They need to relax, just let it go, and buzz down low. I need to make it a habit to daily, for a while at least, getting some tuba time in .

And of course there’s so much I want to read that I haven’t read yet. You know, I’ve never read Moby Dick. I’ve fallen in love with the writings of Mari Sandoz, who grew up in the Niobrara River region of Nebraska not far from the haunts of my great-great grandfather and his family. Her descriptions of life on the Great Plains — especially the harsh winters — is breath-taking. I’ve read her Cheyenne Autumn and her work on Crazy Horse, and I’m in the middle of Old Jules (a work about her father). She also wrote Cattlemen (haven’t read yet) and another called Beavermen (hunters after beaver pelts). She won pulitzer(s) for some of her work.

One book that I read this past year is Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt, former Nebraska poet laureate. It’s wonderful.

Writing? I’m doing that too. Just released Saving Arapahoe, the third book in the Johnny Stevens Adventures Series. I’m working on a big fictional piece that I want to finish before I die (no, I’m not announcing any revelation, just a comment that I want to get the book written. I’m still in the early stages — a full outline has yet to be completed. It’ll be called — no, I’m not going to release the name just yet — but it’ll be something appropriate.

I’ve got a Grandpa kind of book where he has discussions with his grandkids about various things. That’s still being formed — notes and a couple of chapters — but I’m not sure where that’s going.

I’ve got a couple other manuscripts well underway: Jimmy and the Facinorous Wizard is one that I wrote twenty years ago and need to revamp/rewrite portions of it. I also wrote a sequel to Off Balance maybe ten-twelve years ago and I need to update … I’ve gone from having PD for 15 years to 25 years. That’s amazing to me …. I’m still kicking around, way longer than my first neuro said I would.

What’s slowing me down?

If I stand back and look at things objectively, it seems that my back pain gets in the way of everything else. It’s hard to put on socks and underwear and pants in the morning because it’s hard to reach my feet. I just can’t bend my legs easily, because of my back. Now, I think the back pain is related to PD. When I walk, I tend to shuffle, and that surely doesn’t help matters. It’s a strain on my lower back, not to mention the beating that my toes and toe-nails take.

Two summers ago I had an orthopedist (sp) look at it. He did an MRI or CT Scan (I don ‘t remember) and determined that I have arthritis in my spinal column. Several of the disks have arthritic tissue hitting the sides (or walls) of the disks. I don’t know if I have that right, but it’s something like that. Anyway, He tried to remove the pain sensory nerve (that’s not what it’s called but I’m drawing a blank right now), and I thought at first it helped, but I think that was just wishful thinking. By the end of the week, my pain was back to square one.

But … do not lose hope! I am looking into a back brace that leverages the thighs to help lift up the upper body, taking some of the weight off my hips, which should alleviate much of the back pain. I tried the device for 10 minutes at a PD walk-a-thon a month or two ago, and it was delicious. The device forced me to stand up straight, shoulders back, chest up and out, and head back. I was pain free for those ten minutes and it was wonderful. There was even a bit of a residual effect afterwards. This brace fixes my posture problems. I will keep y’all updated on how it goes. I’m the tenth person who will be wearing this brace (so far) so it’s relatively new. I’ll keep the PD community updated.

Praise God that there are new things coming along all the time! I just need to hang in there on a daily basis, focus on him, and let him take care of worrying about things. He’s the one in charge. He takes care of the birds in the air or the flowers in the field, and he’ll take care of me. I just need to submit to him and obey when I hear him calling me.

I’ve written way too much this morning, but it’s been fun.

See ya.

KC and Buffalo

You know, I’ve got a lot of respect for Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills. One could tell right away, very early on in his career, that Josh Allen was going to be something special — and he is indeed. And honestly, even after last night’s game, I can say that I believe that the Bills may have a (very) slightly more talented team than the Chiefs. However, the Chiefs have the edge of knowing how to win the game when it really, really matters. It indeed was a good game. And oh boy, Mahomes is one fun guy to watch play!

Tampa and Detroit

I’m happy for the Lions and the city of Detroit. It’s been a LONG time since they’ve had a team of this caliber … or maybe this is the first time. They were almost halfway decent in the Ndamukong Suh and early Matthew Stafford days, but they couldn’t quite get there. I like Tampa and Baker Mayfield too … I don’t understand though why Mayfield doesn’t throw more often to Trey Palmer, probably the fastest man on the football field.

Reading, Writing, and ‘Rithmatic

Just got back last night from a trip to Portland, OR for a visit regarding “my” clinical trial … which really belongs to a few dozen of us who remain on this exciting Abbvie-951 clinical trial.

The product — which I think is now called “pro duodopa”– is available in England as of last week.. Everything has been working well for me, and I’m forever grateful to have been allowed to continue on this study. The difference between how my body responds to this new method of liquid injection — versus the pills that you never were sure of whether you were too early or too late (or both) — is remarkable.

I’m not graceful, by any means, and I still fall. (As an aside, my grandkids think it’s funny (well, five of the six of them are boys under the age of four).) But I don’t fall very often. When I can remain in the moment I do pretty well. I think it means focusing on what I”m doing and avoiding random thoughts. But then again, I can overthink or overfocus on something …. and that makes it worse.

So it’s a horse a piece. 🙂

What’s on your reading list? (Welcome to today’s Random Thoughts episode, ha ha).

I read Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes” for the first time. Don’t know why I hadn’t read it before — I love Bradbury — but it was excellent as expected. I hadn’t read him for a couple of years and I had forgotten — well, not forgotten, but I hadn’t spent time enjoying — how descriptive, how sensual (in the literal appealing to the senses (that is, you can hear, smell, taste, or feel something that he wants to set as a backdrop)).

I’m in the middle of Mari Sandoz’s “Old Jules,” basically a portrayal of Jules Sandoz, Mari’s father. The book isn’t really a biography inasmuch as it’s a thorough, almost Ken-Burns-like documentary about life on the Plains in the 1860s – 1890s. Life was rough back then! Even the climate was (or seems, anyway) rougher than we have it today.

Actually, her description of the weather is similar to the weather I experienced growing up in Iowa and Nebraska … every winter we’d get days where the highs are zero degrees (fahrenheit) down to minus 20 or minus 30. I remember a two-week span in the mid 1980s — December, 1983, in fact — where the HIGHEST temp recorded during the two week span was minus 8 degrees. Yikes. Brutal.

But I’m straying from the topic. What is the topic? Oh, books. Yes, I’m in the middle of Old Jules and am thoroughly enjoying it. The depiction of her father growing up in the Midwest (which, for the most part, was really the west at the time) is illustrative of her talents as a writer . I’ve got this image of a grizzled not-quite-old man who was rude, boisterous, and a rebel to most government authority, but who loved his neighbors and those whom he knew needed someone to watch after them.

He was vocal in his charges against political figures, especially those who didn’t necessarily work hard for what they got but instead were given positions through nepotism. He even ran for a state position. He was the local postmaster for a number of years and lived in a 3-foot high dugout (cave, more or less) for a number of years before marrying and “moving up.” I haven’t finished the book, but it seems that he was married at least four times. Turns out that he needed a woman who was at least as tough as he was, someone to keep him honest and accountable. He was very smart and therefore was a community leader, though he was reluctant to be leading any individual. Anyway, more on that later.

What’s on your listening list? Recently … I’ve got:

• Beethoven’s 9th symphony, second movement
• “Hocus Pocus” by Focus
• Chick Corea’s “Spanish Heart” album
• Maynard Ferguson (MF Horn), back before he went commercial … I made the mistake of playing Maynard’s “Primal Scream” right after “MF Horn,” and I had forgotten how his earlier stuff is so much better (IMO) than his later work. But maybe that’s just me. I love the Conquistador album but maybe that’s because the first time I saw him was on his Conquistador tour (I was a high schnool junior). Fun memories.
• Oh, and I can’t leave out Blue Oyster Cult’s “Godzilla.”

Enough rambling for now. Between the start and end of this post I have also eaten two bowls of cereal, made a cup of really good coffee, and did some tidying up in preparation for my parents’ arrival this afternoon. See ya.

Gotta Love Mondays

There are a ton of reasons why I’ve always appreciated Mondays. A Monday is a new start, it’s fresh energy akin to splashing in cold, numbing water in the summer and hot, steamy showers in the winter.

But it’s more than that. My brain tends to feel fresher on Mondays, assuming I don’t work much the previous weekend. I think it’s true that — for me, anyway — Monday is my most creative day. My schedule is pretty open on Mondays. We do twenty minutes of stretching, three days a week (MWF), with our older daughter and her two kids (my first two grandkids)! They’ve been in Anchorage the past nearly three years — that’s a four hour time difference. So if we do it right after lunch, like say 1pm EST, that’s 9am for them out west, and that fits their schedule pretty well.

The other thing that happens on Mondays is I have a Tai Chi class for an hour Monday evenings. There will always be naysayers out there who say it doesn’t do anything for Parkinson’s, but I’ve found that it helps me quite a bit.

• It has helped me balance. If I do the “put shoes on while standing” thing by lifting one leg at a time, I still can’t balance on the other leg. I’ve never been able to do that. But I’ve found that if I’m leaning too much one direction, my body can sense it and respond, e.g., shifting body weight to compensate.
• Center of gravity / center of balance: keeping that in your core is vital for balance and stability. Our instructor calls it something that sounds like Dante-Em (that’s don-tay-em). I don’t remember Dante having a character named Em. But anyway, the Dante-Em is two inches below your belly button (well, my belly button. I don’t know about yours) and two inches IN toward your stomach.
• When I’m mindful, Tai Chai helps med get back under control when I start shuffling. My shuffle these days is basically a gait that drags my feet, never stepping out further than maybe six inches forward, and because my feet can’t keep pace with my upper body, I lean more and more forward, which makes my feet shuffle faster, and eventually I fall over. (Except for that one recent bad fall I had (said fall being written about in these pages a couple weeks back), I”ve always been able to catch myself. I’ve got strong wrists, apparently. Anyway, so Tai Chi is helping me be much more intentional in my movement. I find myself whispering, “Tai Chi …. think Chi walking.” Tai Chi has the concept of legs being empty or full (I picture water, but it could be amost anything. When your weight is on one leg, it’s full. When you lift the other leg to take a step, that leg is empty. As you shift your weight back and forth from leg to leg, being aware of which leg is empty and which is full — and the process of getting there — is helpful for me. I slow down. When I whisper, “Tai Chi,” I can bring myself to slow to a halt and then start again.

Anyway, it’s good stuff.

I was talking about Mondays. But every day is a good day because of the One Who made it. To Him give the glory.

The Fall (to be enunciated as one would Monty Python’s “The Larch”).

The Fall

Life happens so quickly. You’re standing in the middle of the highway of life looking down the road toward the future, and on the glistening, heat-baked asphalt is the tiny, wavy, mirage-like  image of a vehicle headed toward you. You know instinctively that the vehicle is your future. You‘re enjoying your daily snack of popcorn as you see this thing growing larger and larger. Every twenty-four hours the truck gets closer by one day (you decide it’s a truck because you’ll need something to haul all your stuff away).  The truck looks big and then bigger and then it ‘s at its biggest, at which point it roars over you before you know what happened.

Where did that come from?

There are other surprises out there, things we think will never happen, things we think that we’re above needing to handle.

“I’ll never be like my parents.” Every day, however, you look more and more like them. You sound more like them each day. You act more like then each day.

“No, I don’t need help with my buttons,” you hear your father say. Then one day you hear yourself saying it. Within a few years, it becomes, “I do need help with my buttons … please.”

“Of course I’ll keep my job,” you say with confidence. After all, you’ve just been handed the management position for the choicest project in the company.

“Okay, I was laid off, but now I’m at this company that has never had a layoff. Job security worries are a thing of the past.” Disability retirements are not a thing of the past, though. They happen.

“As long as I keep running every day, I’ll be able to keep going.” One day I can run and the next day I can’t.

Ditto with tennis.

As far as the ignominy of using a walker, “I don’t need it.”They looked silly. I hoped I never needed one of those. I use one now when I think I need it – every morning, first thing; every evening, last thing; and any time I’ll be out and about for more than five or ten minutes. It’s becoming a permanent fixture, or at least until I advance to a wheelchair.

 My balance is fine (in general). That general will turn into a major or perhaps a private in a while.

When I fall, I’m always able to catch myself.

I’m safe with my three-wheeled trike and won’t crash it. Well, just two weeks ago I crashed it.

Monday of this week, I was beginning to walk down our back steps that lead from the driveway down to a sidewalk at the back of our house. Little Winston (age two) was at the top step and held up his hand so that I would hold it as he stepped down. He took a step, then I took a step, but my foot caught on the lip of the lower step and my body careened out of kilter, losing balance. I remember thinking, “Let go of Winston’s hand,” and then I slammed face-first onto the sidewalk below.

Fortunately, Winston kept his balance and did not fall.

Usually if I fall, I hop back up injury-free, smiling or laughing and acting as if nothing happened.

This time was different. I began trying to move, but a sharp, searing pain ran up the right side of my neck to my eyes and temple. I was writhing in agony, my brain feeling that it was swelling and was about to explode. I had never felt throbbing in my head that bad. I took inventory of my body parts. Neck, okay. Back, okay. Arms and legs, okay. Chest and torso, okay. Head? Ouch. Teeth, not sure. I couldn’t feel them. Jaw, aching.

“Grampa swing Win’fon?” The voice of my young grandson Winston was soft and sweet, funny and soothing at the same time. He wasn’t demanding that I swing him. He was asking if I was still okay enough to be able to swing him.

My first ambulance ride

“Winston, go find Grandma, please.”

“Grampa play a’side (outside) Win’fon?”

“Winston, not right now. Go find Grandma.”

And he does. She was in the garage, not far from where I was lying. She arrived, learned what had happened, left and returned with old wash clothes. She patted the blood from my face (there wasn’t much) and asked me some questions. I felt I was fully or mostly cognizant, but my wife then called 911. The EMS team took a while to get there – they had been responding to someone else first – but they arrived and quickly hauled me to the hospital. Wake Cary took various measurements with a CT Scan. They determined I had no concussion, no breaks or fractures, and no brain bleed. All I had was mostly a bruised, swollen, battered face, jaws that weren’t aligned, and one incredible headache. I went to the dentist the next day, and she confirmed that my jaws and teeth were fine and should realign themselves in a few days when the swelling was gone.

Praise God that it wasn’t any worse than it was!

All this heightens the reminder to me that I, along with the rest of us folks in the lower half of the Fuel gauge, need to be careful and intentional in our movement.

It wasn’t supposed to end this way

The Cornhuskers were 5-3 after our win over Purdue game (a game that I attended), and I knew that in the last four games we should be able to win at least one, enabling us to reach the magical six wins to be bowl eligible.

I also — seriously — thought that we had a good chance of winning all four of those on the schedule:
Michigan St., Maryland, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Our defense had really jelled and was playing solid ball, espsecially against the run. Our offense was sputtering a little but was doing well enough to get by.

Those four games went approximately like this: lost by a last second field goal; lost by a late fourth quarter touchdown; lost by a last second field goal; and lost by a last second field goal. Turnovers have been our bane this year, like an unbelievable number of fumbles. I WILL say this: the Huskers sure provide entertaining football! We finished the year at 5-7.

Keep in mind that this is a very young team — lots of frosh and soph players out there. We have three QBS who can run the ball. And I like that the offense was showing occasional option looks. *If* we could run the option with the fluidity of a Tommie Frazier or Turner Gill … okay, if we could also have Irving Fryar as receiver or slot back

Home Safety

I have become more apprehensive when walking downstairs and (sometimes) upstairs. My wife is being proactive and is making the house safer. This past week, she installed double rails going down the garage steps between the kitchen and garage; she installed double rails going down the steps from the driveway to the backyard; she installed two safety grips in the shower, and she bought a shower bench seat so that I wouldn’t have to stand while showering.

Physical Activity

I went on two walks last week of one mile each, once with the walker and once without. I should be doing that every day or at least every other day. My trike is back from the bicycle shop, so I need to get that out and about. A year ago, I was doing a lot of riding on the ATT (American Tobacco Trail) and could go 20 or 30 miles with no problems. It’s been cold this past week and I don’t likel riding in the cold. I should maybe take the trike out this afternoon though (depending on the temp outside). We’ll see.

I am taking Tai Chi (as opposed to Chai Tea) once a week, and that’s helping balance (somewhat) but especially helps me with “intentional movement” — that is, when I start careening out of control,l I can just tell myself, “STOP,” and then begin what’s called “Chi walking,” where each step is a focused movement.

Mental Activity

So I’m still writing / reading, more of the latter than the former. I have put together a manuscript of stories written by my great grandfather (Mom’s mom’s father) and am debating whether to make it public or just publish a few volumes for the currently living members in our genealogy. He was a good writer and the stories are fun, quite original. Some funny, some romantic, some serious, some patriotic, some mysterious — all combined into one volume. Currently there are 46 stories and 2 poems. I have enough of his poetry that I could make a whole ‘nother book; I have enough long stories that I could make yet another whole book …. and I have two or three novels that are missing some pages. I also have a couple hundred paged legal practice “how to” books (he was a lawyer). He also was doing his own style of Bible homiletics and/or commentary and was working on summarizing the Bible as a whole. He was working on Exodus I think at the time of his death.

This is good stuff.

It Is Well!

Change happens. With chronic illness, change isn’t always in the right direction. But here we are … what are we going to learn from it?

This has been an exciting fall for me. First, there is Nebraska football. I won’t ago into details, but the gist of it was that I get to see Husker football in Lincoln. By the way, if you want great Ethiopian cuisine, you can find it in Lincoln at a restaurant named “Tiru” off of N. 27th. The food and service is wonderful, it wasn’t crowded (even on game day), and I’d give it 5 stars. Try it.

I have two and a half bins of letters, notes, newspaper clippings, etc., from, by, or on my great-grandfather John Stevens (my mom’s mom’s dad). He could do anything. He farmed, he ran a newspaper (Edison Echo), and most of all he was a lawyer. In his copius leisure time he wrote stories. I have sixty or seventy stories. They are well written. It’s interesting from a cultural perspective because he conveys both the generational flavors (I mean, how old folks talk), and he gives us a Nebraska flavor (which I recognized). I’m compiling maybe 50 of his best stories. There’s a mix … not all are knee slappers. He wrote some romantic comedy, some serious (e.g., law and order) stuff, some religious stuff (even had part of his own commentaries on the Bible), some history (the N.Cherokee and Lakota Sioux fighting — that’s what my last book (Saving Arapahoe) was based on….

So fo the last 25 years of having PD, I’ve had many, many falls. The number of falls has reduced significantly when I began using the AbbVie pump in a clinical trial. I’m in my fourth year on the trial. And I love it.

But,’ I still do fall. A week ago today, I managed to trip and fall down the little 6-step stairway that we built to walk down from the garage into the backyard. I was holding my two-year-old grandson’s hand, and as soon as I realized I was falling, I knew I had to let go of his hand. He was able to remain standing.

I, however, landed face-first on the sidewalk in the backyard. At that moment, I could have been a Monty Python character groaning, “My brain hurts.”

Indeed, I couldn’t move without intense and torturous pain. My brain felt like it was going to explode. It took about 30 minutes for EMS to get there … but they did get there and took me to ER. Praise the Lord, I had no fractures or breakage of anything; I had no brain bleed; and I even had no concussion. Well, that’s debatable. it FELT like a concussion. It took a couple days for the swelling to go down so that the headache would go away.

And I had a heck of a beautiful black / deep red eye.

Oh, I also went to the dentist and had it checked out. My jaw was hurting and my lower and upper jaws weren’t lining up. When the swelling went away, the jaws were fine.

I’ve had numerous bicycle, tricyle, and other various accidents, and I sometimes would be scraped and banged up all over. But this fall down the steps onto the concrete, hitting my head, was something I haven’t experienced. I hope I never do again.

I need to remember to take one step at a time.

Jesus and the Game

“Enjoying the game?” asked the man sitting next to me.
I glanced over and recognized him immediately.
“Oh, hi Jesus,” I said. “How long have you been sitting here?”
“Since the start of the game” he said with a smile.
“You mean you’ve been here for three innings and I haven’t noticed you?”
“That’s about right,” he said.
I guess I’ve been too focused on the game,” I shrugged.
“Guess again,” he replied.
“Well, and I’m distracted and annoyed by these four girls sitting right in front of me,” I whispered. “They’re really obnoxious and don’t seem to be paying much attention to the game. And they all wear sunglasses on top of their heads like they’re some kind of fashion model or something.”
“Why are you annoyed?” asked Jesus.
“I guess I wanted to be able to relax, to have some peace and quiet and maybe a little serenity in my life.”
“You don’t go to a ball game if you’re looking for serenity,” laughed Jesus. “You go to a library or to the symphony, or …” his voice tailed off.
“Or what?”
“Or you come to me.”
“To you?”
“Come to me, all who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest – remember that?” Jesus asked.
“Matthew eleven,” I said.
“Right. Peace isn’t something you find at a ballfield. In fact, it’s not something that you can always find in nature either. Peace – real peace – is found only in me.”
“Doesn’t it help to be able to just chill?” I said. “Mary and Martha come to mind. Martha was frantic because she was trying to prepare a meal for you, and Mary was just relaxing.”
“Mary was sitting at my feet, listening to every word I spoke.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Listen. I’ll tell you a secret. See that guy standing in the aisle over behind third base?”
“The one with a kid on his shoulder and another kid tugging on his pant leg?”
“Yep, that’s the one. His name is Mitch. Mitch works for a road construction crew. He mans a jack hammer. He also has four kids, volunteers weekly downtown at the soup kitchen, and teaches Sunday School And you know what?”
“What?” I responded.
“Mitch is the most serene person at the game tonight.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not kidding. He comes to me daily and unloads his burdens and gets recharged. But mostly he comes to listen and to get centered.”
“You know, I really need to do that too.”
“Yes, I know. Now, let’s talk about Abby, Dori, Melissa, and Emily.”
“Who?”
“The four ‘annoying girls’ sitting in front of us. You said they don’t really seem to be into the game.”
“Right.”
“You’re judging them, you know.”
“Am I?”
“You’re wanting them to be as into the game as you are. You want them to be sensitive to your need for peace and quiet.”
“Well, yes, I guess so.”
“But maybe they are at a different place in life than you are.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, for starters, Abby’s mother died from breast cancer about a year ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. That’s got to be hard for her.”
“It has been, but she has a strong faith and that has been a great help to her.”
“I’ll try to be more understanding,” I said.
“Wait, I’m not done. Let me tell you about Dori. Dori’s father lost his job six months ago. Her mother is on disability, and they’re buried under a mountain of debt. They just lost their house and may have to move soon.”
“Ouch, that’s got to be stressful.”
“It is. Dori’s parents have developed a solid faith through all of this, though, and they will come through it okay.”
“You’re teaching me that I shouldn’t judge others because I don’t know what they are going through.”
“No, I’m teaching you that you shouldn’t judge others because you are not the judge.”
“Okay.”
“Now, Emily has her own problems. She has a cleft palate that gives her a speech impediment, and she gets viciously teased at school. She has an inferiority complex and is battling depression.”
“Wow, depression at that young age?” My heart was feeling remorse for the way I had let myself be annoyed with these girls.
“She, too, will be fine. Her adversity now will give her a sensitivity to special needs children, and that will serve her well later in life.”
“Whew. So, in spite of these problems, these kids will survive okay.”
“Not in spite of, but perhaps because of,” said Jesus softly. “Then there’s Melissa.”
“What about Melissa?” I asked.
“She has leukemia, diagnosed a week ago.”
“Oh no!” I cried. “I was hoping she would turn out okay, too.”
“Oh, she will,” said Jesus.
I was relieved. “So these four may all end up being old ladies together, going to baseball games for the social aspect,” I mused.
Jesus smiled. “I said Melissa will turn out okay. I didn’t say she would live. She’ll come home to me in about a year.”

I sat there for a minute, taking this all in. I wanted to find some way to help, some way to rectify the situations.
“Jesus, is there anything I can do to help, like buy them lemonades or soda pop or ice cream or something like that?”
“Well, they’re already drinking lemonades or sodas (hey, you do know, don’t you, that down here in the South we call it soda, not pop?) and two of them are on diets and wouldn’t want to be tempted by ice cream. Now, my favorite thing to eat in a stadium is a Runza.”
“What’s a Runza? I’ll go get four of them. Back in a couple.” I stood up to head toward the food court.
Jesus said, “Stop. You won’t find runzas anywhere but Nebraska, and the place where you can find them is Memorial Stadium in Lincoln. They are served hot and will warm your innards in a heartbeat.”

“That sounds good,” I said, watching the team on the field execute a nice double play. “D’ja see that play?” I asked Jesus, turning my head. He was gone. Vanished. Kind of like how the lion Aslan, in C.S. Lewis’s “Chronicles of Narnia,” comes and goes as he wants.
“But darn it all, Jesus, you never gave me a straight answer on what I can do to help these girls.” Hey, what if I just said hi to them after the game as we’re exiting the park. In fact, I could time my leaving with when they decide to leave, and I’ll casually walk out with them. Even if it’s only to say, “Hello, did you enjoy the game,” it might put a smile on their faces that someone out there is nice.
That thought warmed my heart, and I knew it was on the right path. But then I thought: Maybe that would seem creepy to girls these days, being approached by a complete stranger.

At that moment, someone hit a home run, and we all stood to cheer. Even the four girls in front of me cheered. The pair of sunglasses that was on top of the head of one of the girls went flying backward. It landed on the concrete floor of my row. I reached over, picked it up, and said, “Miss, I believe these are yours. They don’t appear to be scratched.”

“Thank you, sir,” she gushed.
“Welcome,” I said, and that was the end of that.

An inning later, they team mascot was shooting free t-shirts from a hand-held, cannon-type thing, and with a not very graceful jump, I managed to catch one! I had my own souvenir shirt! I checked the label and, indeed, it was ‘L’ and was just my size.
One of the girls turned around and congratulated me on a “spectacular catch,” as she worded it. I handed her the shirt. “Here, you can have this. I have plenty of team tees at home.”
“Are you sure?” she asked meekly.
“Yep, it’s yours.”
“Oh thank you, thank you, mister. I’ll use it as my nightie. It’s just the right size for me.”

The game resumed and nothing else happened. Even though the sunglasses thing and the tee-shirt thing weren’t meant to calm down the girls, they in fact did start watching the game more. I was impressed with their thanks, their gratefulness. They seem genuine, like they have learned how to respond to other generations. Maybe it’s time for me to start paying attention to other generations too.