Astro’s Game

Traffic was light as Filly drove her small car through the streets to downtown. There were more “rage” drivers than ever before and Filly avoided them, overtly. Cars cutting in and out of the traffic as they raced at almost twice the legal speed, were not her cup of tea. She had her audiobook playing and it kept her mind working and puzzling. She liked staying “engaged” in the problem at hand.

Filly had received a notification from her sister reminding her of an upcoming graduation. The girl graduating was her sisters kid, a cheerful, “glass-half-full”, bubbly girl with long thick auburn hair, huge brown eyes, and a thick fringe of eyelashes. It was in that girls room that Filly had been given to stay in since she was in college, when she went to visit her sister. Filly had spent quiet moments looking at the giant, two foot glittering three- D heart on the wall in the room as it conceptualized the girl well. She was all heart…and Soul, Filly thought.

She had a purchased beautiful spiritual statue, pale blue vintage opalescent glass that was a depiction of a holy woman, the mother of Jesus, and since the names were the same, it would be her gift. She had spent time writing the poem to go with the gift and had wrapped it in bubble wrap, taped it in a box and put it on the table ready to mail. She had not had time to get to the post office before the baseball game, which was where she was going, so the gift would be late to arrive. But FIlly knew that the girl would not mind. She was always a happy girl. A grateful girl.

Filly turned her attention to her driving as she was getting close to her favorite place to park. The place to park was a secret place where no one else could fit because their cars were too big. She had heard that local democrats were thinking about adding a cost for parking on the street after six pm, and currently it was free. Filly thought that for a political party that always claimed to care about the poor, they certainly were not efficient with the funds that they already had, and taking more money (which was their MO) never worked to fix their problems. She sighed.

The spot was there and Filly slid in like flynn. She took her car key off the fob and put the rest of the keys back in the car and then locked her door. She pushed the button to fold the key in half and put it in her pocket, along with the earplugs, six pieces of chewing gum, and a nut and caramel bar she also had in there. She started walking towards the arena. The wind blew her and tugged at her jacket so she put it on and zipped it up, pulling her orange Astros hat down farther on her forehead.

She noticed that the stadium had put up barriers of green mesh netting along the side. That side of the building, was the spot, where a year ago, they had dug up the beautiful trees that were originally there and put in a rubber surface with about twenty small shrub like plants. The rubber had heated up more than expected, and always smelled like urine.

The newly planted greenery had died almost instantly. The hot smelly area where there had once been a shady respite, was a true failure of landscaping and planning and not only that, it was disappointing that they had cut down the healthy trees that were there, initially. But now, it looked like they were tearing out the rubber and the dead plants, and were going to try something else. That was good she thought. She hoped someone different had planned the area to be more natural and shady.

Her husband was there to greet her at the place where the tickets were scanned and she had already gone through the body scanner uneventfully. The process was pretty organized and speedy she thought. They smiled at each other and grabbed hands and went to get their coupon for a free soda, as they were not going to be drinking (alcohol), which they never were. It was a nice savings to not have to buy the drinks.

Then they went to get their food because they did not like to leave their seats, once the game had started. The people they were meeting at the game had gone early to get the Tucker shirts give away, but Filly’s husband had been ten minutes too late to get one. And she was twenty minutes even later so she also did not get a shirt.

They waited in a short line with people talking and shifting and then got up to their brightly lit easy to read kiosk where they ordered… Filly got a small individual peperoni pizza and some cracker jacks, and hubby got a cheeseburger and popcorn. They gave the guy their coupon for their free drinks and went to fill the paper cups up, and then moved down the steps to their seats.

The star spangled banner, sung by a school choir, had beautiful harmony and signaled the game was about to start. It was Star Wars night at the stadium, named Minute maid park…perhaps related to minute men, Filly thought.

“Minutemen were a small hand-picked elite force which were required to be highly mobile and able to assemble quickly. Minutemen were selected from militia muster rolls by their commanding officers. Typically 25 years of age or younger, they were chosen for their enthusiasm, reliability, and physical strength. Florida Foods hired an advertising agency based in Boston, a city whose rich history included the famous Minutemen.”

The agency that named minute made park came from the brand minute maid, a name connoting convenience and ease of preparation. Filly wondered why it had been named Minute Maid park, and looked it up on her phone. She discovered that the field had originally been called Enron field before Minute maid bought the naming rights. Interesting, she thought, about Enron, considering the research she had been doing.

It was an exciting game. The players seemed determined and were running faster and sliding farther and reaching higher. She looked at the shouting excited fans and remembered, not that long ago, when people still believed the “myth” of the usefulness of masks.

She had been writing the graduation card for her sisters kid earlier in the day, and that was when she had found cards with original art created before the pandemic depicting bats, masks and such, Filly and had posted “foreshadowing rejected” for two of the pieces, the art with the bat, and the art with the masks.

The artist, she discovered, lived in Portland Oregon. Filly had just spoken to a wonderful family member who had a sibling in Portland Oregon and the sibling had said how “refreshing” it was for kids to be required to give gender pronouns, while the school had rainbow flags everywhere.

The family member had expressed shock and dissappointment at this revelation by her sibling, that someone who did not even have any children of their own, would want sexual issues being discussed and forced on elementary school children. What was the purpose of dividing families from each other by school boards Filly wondered? Division of families and children ruled by government was a Marxist philosophy she thought to herself. Interesting again. She wondered if the people who supported Marxism knew about Karl Marx and how he treated his family and how in every case it had been tried, his policies had failed horribly.

The game had started and she started to watch. It had entertainment throughout. In Chicago, at Wrigley field the week before when she was there a that game, they had done a Wonder Woman on a toy horse compilation. (She was not sure but that is what she thought it was) And they had talked about which was more preferable, sleeping with white noise or sleeping in the quiet dark. Sleeping in the quiet dark had won.

IN the same way, in Minute Maid park, they had a vote for sleeping with the fan on (which filly did, and she thought to herself, also provided white noise) and for people who had not yet put away the laundry (filly had not).

They also voted on who wanted the Darth v\Vader versus Yoda… Dark versus light. Filly did not understand the Star wars saga, and the vote was approximately a tie… possibly because the bad guy did show some qualities of good… and the good guy seemed to also show some qualities that were bad.

But the space theme of star wars, interestingly matched or mirrored the theme Filly had picked for the library card she had gotten as they had offered her a choice. She picked Space over picking “black and gold”. She also noted that when she had typed on X her two “rejection of foreshadowing” posts, she had noticed that it said to respond in this “space”. Space she realized in context with what she knew, was not about someplace way “out there” but was a close as a verbal response to a comment.

Traveling through “space” could be as innocuous as mental telepathy she thought. It was an interesting concept.
The Astro’s won and the fans were so pumped up. Filly and her group trudged elatedly back up the stairs from their seats to the top and someone bumped into her husband and he apologized and then they walked through the various food booths and then down the escalator stairs and around the corner and the same guy bumped into her husband again…and again smiled and they both said sorry. Then a lady near them said “do you know who that guy was… It was Reggie Jackson”. They all stared at each other in disbelief. Filly looked up his photo on her phone and it had indeed been him and other people were saying his name as he passed by.

Filly had been writing about how she believed that things were real and not fiction and chose to give platforms to things that happened to her in real life over believing things that were coming from the internet that were written. So suddenly she thought, what if this meeting with a hall of fame baseball player, was telling her through signs and symbols, that she also had achieved something great with her “spiritual intuition” and the baseball game was a metaphor of such? It made Filly really excited and happy to know that someone of such immense stature had taken the time to “be real” because that is what she chose to believe. She did not believe in coincidences much.

He had bumped into them twice so what two things, she wondered, were landmark hits, grand slams, world series championships in the analogy? In any case, she felt like it was another of the signs and symbols she had come to recognize and be grateful for.

Filly looked up her bible verse for the day and as she mentally predicted, it had to do with “space”.

“And cast ye the unprofitable servant into “outer darkness” and there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Filly had also just written about the way the three biggest investment companies had incorporated ESG scores to the “detriment of profitability” for their investors. She had grave concerns for the ways that “in God we trust” was getting taken out of government practices, including not hiring people because of their skills but because of their pronouns or because of their race. It was wrong and it was going to backfire.

She thought of the thief she had been researching, who had told the victim that they were going to help “catch the bad guys” when the thief was in fact the bad guy. Like the tables were turned on the Pharoh, in the bible, the tables would be turned on the bad guys, and they would indeed be caught, when the lie that they had told the target, would be realized in reverse. Evil destroys itself.