Catching up.

Sorry about the lack of a post Saturday. The family got up early and went garage sale shopping and then ran some errands before heading home.

Normally while attending garage sales I hope for cards and just kind of hang out. Trying to keep amused while playing driver for Mrs. Spiff. Occasionally though, something will catch my attention. That did not appear to be the case this time when Mrs. Spiff handed me the paper with the list of garage sale ads and asked me to mark the ones I wanted to get to.

I quickly scanned through most of them. Clothes, clothes, shoes, and clothes. Great. One listed baseball equipment. Probably just a Wiffle ball set or something. Oh well. I marked it anyway.

When we arrived at the sale, I noticed two large duffel bags sitting next to a plastic tub of aluminum bats. Spiff Jr. also saw the bats and trotted over to take a look. I looked inside one of the bags. Batting helmets. Already have a couple of those. On to the next bag. Catcher's gear.

Spiff Jr. looked into the bag. "Pudge gear!" he exclaimed. "We should get this, then I can do everything Pudge does." He picked up a shin guard and held it up to his leg. It was way too big. He needs another five or six years. What caught my attention though was that he was holding it up correctly. An older boy came up and started looking. "This is Pudge's gear." Spiff Jr. proclaimed. The boy looked at him and started to goof off with the gear. He put the chest protector on wrong and made a comment about robot legs while holding a shin guard. Genuine pain in Spiff Jr.'s eyes. "You have it wrong. The chest pad goes the other way. It's not a robot leg, it's a shinguard." The boy shrugged, dropped the gear, and walked off. Spiff Jr. started to carefully put it back in the bag.

I grabbed the bag and dumped out the gear. Three chest protectors, three sets of shin guards, a mask, and a mitt. All in pretty decent shape. I grabbed the best looking chest protector, and shinguards. Scooping up the mask and mitt I turned to my wife. In spite of previous insistence that catching is not a job for her boy, she nodded in agreement and asked the lady how much she wanted for the gear. "Uh, $7.00?" was the answer. Sold, I said.

The gear is still too big and may never be worn. On the other hand, there is a dream that lives big in one four year-old's heart. To be "a pudge." To catch with his hat on backwards and his mask over his face. To wear shinguards and squat behind the plate. It seems that $7.00 is a small price to put down on a dream.