Two Gals and a Guy

Several of my best friends are ladies. Some are fellow writers and some are just long time friends. Saturday two ladies that I occasionally pal around with went to PNC Park for the Pirate baseball game. The Cincinnati Red Sox were playing the Pirates. The day was warm and sunny; great weather to be entrenched in those narrow blue stadium seats to watch the game. As usual, we arrived early to avoid as much of the traffic as we could, traveling into Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from the Donegal area. The traffic was light until the expected moderate traffic congestion that appears on the approach to the Squirrel Hill Tunnel. The tunnel is a bottleneck that funnels so many ingresses from the east into Pittsburgh.

I’m now wearing a 30 day holter monitor to evaluate my irregular heart beat. I brought the doctor’s order for it, because my friend has a pain stimulator and she’s not permitted to pass through the electronic scan at PNC Park’s entrance. I thought the same might be true for my monitor. We entered from the gate that avoided the scan. The crew still searched our bags when we were admitted and quickly passed through.

We found our seats and settled in them behind the third base line. The sun filled the stadium and was quite warm. Pirate and Red Sox fans were equally distributed in the seats around us. As the innings progressed and the score see-sawed back and forth, the chatter two rows behind us began to grate on my nerves. Beer befuddled brains loosened their tongues. A constant argumentative babble flowed. Three young men seemed to ignore the game and they bickered as to who should have been entered into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Names were bandied about, argued, then reintroduced. Words became slurred and the pronunciation of the letter S soon became the letter Z.

About the seventh inning I’d had enough. I stood, turned around and said, “Will you guys shut up. People want to enjoy the game.” One smart mouth cupped his ear and said, “What did you say. I can’t hear you.” But they did settle slightly and talked a bit more quietly.

All in all, it was a nice outing; however blowing my top ruined my resolution. I’ve been saying for several years, “If I’m grumpy, I don’t leave home. No one wants to deal with a grumpy old man,” but I wasn’t grumpy when I left home, I was prodded into that frame of mind, slowly and unavoidably.