that always makes me happy. when we were watching “catch me if you can” we cracked up when kids were asking pilots for their autographs.
my first autograph was of bill buckner the year that he got traded from the dodgers to the Cubs.
after that i was hooked and i would get lots of athlete’s autographs, and then sometime in college i thought that i had all these signatures of all these people who i didn’t know, but i didn’t have any of the people who i knew, and loved.
so i got a baseball and had all of my exgirlfriends sign it for me.
eventually it ended up being all the girls i had sex with, which wasn’t the plan, but it was sorta the same theme.
the idea was that on a dreary day where i was feeling low i could look at that ball and think, “hmmm, these people actually loved me for at least a little while.”
even though ive done a pretty good job of maintaining that baseball i don’t really look at that baseball the same way any more.
some of the names make me wince, some of them make me really happy. some of them make me wonder how i ever got *that* girl to sign it. and a few of the names are now fading.
but the ball has sorta helped calm me down a little. you really don’t want names on there that you will wince at in the future. you rally don’t want names of people who you barely know. you really want names of people who are super special so that when you see the autograph it will spark a memory and you will think nice things, not sad things or icky things.
one girl wasn’t really my girlfriend, but it was pretty hot sex. so i let her sign her own ball. i was almost as surprised that she signed it as i was that she did it with me.
those are the happy little surprises that balance out the sad little suprises in life. i do my best to remember that they all pretty much even each other out.
anyhow, when i sold hotdogs at candlestick, all the people i worked with signed a stray foul ball on my last day.
weirdly that ball means just as much as all the other autographs that i have too.
see, another little happy suprise.