The game

The room was still pitch dark when Filly heard the alarm ring. Filly stayed warm under the covers. She was back, sleeping in her own bed after having to sleep on the sofa when the repair men were doing the drywall in the bedroom. The dust was contained by sheets of plastic draped over the bed and the furniture, yet the bed was inaccessible. So she had grabbed a blanket and a pillow for the previous nights, and managed to sleep on the sofa yet it was not the same as sleeping in her bed.

Since the workers had finished their work in the bedroom just the day before and had put the bed back in place and removed the plastic sheeting, that night she had, gratefully, been able to crawl back in her bed. She was in her own soft cozy bed, not on the sofa, not having to make herself try to sleep, tossing and turning.

The bedroom was easy to fall asleep in. She loved the white noise of the fan and she loved the little breeze it created at night. The mattress also was new, but Filly had gone and bought a memory foam pad at Walmart that was four inches thick and now when she lay on the bed she sank into the foam as it nested around her.

She had fallen asleep instantly. But the alarm kept ringing. Filly remembered she was traveling today and needed to get up.

She opened her eyes and sat up. Her eyes adjusted to the dark room and she could just make out her clothes in a pile on the floor. Her yoga pants were not pressed, under the mattress, like a Jack Reacher novel, but then, they were yoga pants, not men’s business slacks.

They were black, soft and stretchy. She wore them with a double layered gauzy black skirt and a black hoodie. Nothing needed to be put under a mattress to keep neat.

Some things about Jack were interesting and fun to read but some things were not. Some would say “you do not know Jack” and she would probably have agreed with them, and not be offended.

Filly slid her legs over the side of the bed and then slid her butt down until her feet touched the floor. It was a tall bed and even at five feet nine inches tall and she had her uber long legs, she could barely get in the bed at night and often used a stool to climb up.

She grabbed her clothes and swiftly dressed, brushed her teeth with her electric toothbrush, and put it in her suitcase.

The drive to the airport was fast at five am. No traffic to speak of in the big city. Only one stop to make to drop something off and then on the road again. The group taking the trip to Chicago to watch the baseball game were already gathering together, laughing and talking, all dressed in appropriate gear.

Filly ate a cheese quesadilla at a Tex Mex restaurant in the airport and had them add some guacamole. She only ate half and put the other half in her bag to eat later. Then they all boarded the airplane, and since she was last to board, she did not have a seat. The first seat, you should take, the brightly smiling stewardess said.

The first seat available, she saw, happened to be the first row, and filly noticed that the one guy by the window was smiling and trying to shift his big frame to allow for more room on the middle seat which was empty. And the guy in the first seat on the other side by the aisle, had his hand on the seat on top of a computer pad and a phone and a notebook as if to save it.

“Mind if I sit there” Filly asked, knowing that if she did, she would not have access to the quesadilla in her bag because there was no seat in front to put it under. It would get cold and hard. The guacamole would probably get dark and spoiled.

But she did not want to risk having a no other seat to sit in as it was a full flight. The guy by the window nodded yes, but the guy on the aisle scowled and picked up his equipment. Filly apologized but the guy ignored her.
She put her bag up in the compartment overhead and apologized again for having to step over him one more time.

Then she sat and looked at her phone which was ringing. It was her husband. He was calling her but he was also on the plane. She thought this was funny and she answered.

“HEY TURN AROUND” he said.

She turned towards the friendly man on her left. She could not see much except the side of the plane.

“NO, TURN THE OTHER WAY” her husband said. SO she turned towards the unfriendly man in the other direction, and still could not see her husband in the sea of faces behind her.

“I got the exit row, I have leg room yay” he said, as her husband who was six feet four inches tall, needed every bit of space for his long body that he could possibly get.
“Oh good” Filly said. “I am happy for you”.
“Have a great flight”.

Her husband had said earlier that he was disappointed that they would probably not be able to sit together on the flight but it appeared he was taking it well since he had leg room.

Filly was glad for him. She was still holding her phone, when the unfriendly guy unexpectedly jabbed her arm with his elbow and the phone slid out of her hand onto her lap where she had a pile of magazines, topped with one about Princess Kate.

She felt her arm tight against her chest. She was not really sure how her arm got in the way, as there was only one armrest between them and it was narrow and was shared by both seats. The guy on her right had claimed the armrest and had claimed the space even beyond the armrest. The crowded table?

She squeezed her arms in tighter and tried to access her phone pretending to be a mummy. She was glad the phone had not been knocked out of her hand onto the floor where it might have been out of reach. The friendly guy to her left was squeezing in tight as well, leaning back into the plane wall and keeping his big arms off the armrest between her and him, so she could have room, trying to be courteous to her, which she appreciated.

But frankly there was not really room to maneuver, and that was what the guy on her right was doing anyway… maneuvering. He put his shoulders back and spread out his elbows and jabbed her again. She looked over and he was looking down, writing some math calculations on his pad.

Math that made no sense to her. Filly looked at her phone and began deleting blurry photos from the past week, keeping her arms tight to her side.
At least a dozen more times she got jabbed by the guy on her right. She tried to gain some measure of arm rest “real estate” but the guy had his arm firmly planted on the armrest and intentionally made his arm immovable.

So Filly felt herself starting to get angry.

This armrest is meant to be shared and I cannot move my arm any closer to my side” she said to the man.
“I did not ask you to” he retorted. “Can’t you see I am trying to write”.

No she could not see and she did not get his rude behavior.

Filly took note of his shoes. They were beige sneakers like vintage Keds and they were quilted? Oh brother she thought.

Then she noted his sweater was like a dark green and IT was quilted as well. The man had on glasses and a vest too. The vest was not quilted. He was not big, not tall, maybe 160 pounds, maybe five feet eight inches and not imposing. Short brown hair cut close and pale skin. His equipment looked sterile and untouched. Apparently NOTHING should be touched. The guy was a nerd. A very unfriendly nerd wearing lots of quilted pieces of clothing.

She did not like this guy and she decided in a moment of mental fury, that she was going to make sure there were MORE pieces of him laying around. He was not big, she could take him. She could probably flatten him. Filly looked at how he had his seat-belt off and could easily be pushed into the aisle on his pristine a**.

That was what Jack would have done. But then she acknowledged to herself that she did not really know Jack. She did not make all her decisions like Jack.
Filly slowly realized as she thought about it, that good decisions were not just about things that applied to her, they were about things that applied to others. Here she was on a trip that was fun and exciting. If she let this man and HIS behavior, ruin her joy on the plane, she would be letting HIS bad behavior control her.

But he could not control her thinking. SHE could make a choice to control her thoughts and let what happened in the moment with the rude guy to her right, not affect her at all. Who was ultimately in control of things? NOT this guy, even though he thought he was.

Filly looked to the left at the other man and he was asleep, with his arms crossed peacefully over his chest, arms out of the way like she was doing.

His arms were “crossed”. She thought about the cross and about sacrifice to help others.
Filly went inside her own thinking and started to think about what would make her feel kindly towards someone who was not being nice. She tried one more time to see what he was writing and all she could see was what looked like tiny numbers.
Filly could not really see what he was doing but right then and there she knew she had to forgive this person.
She tried to imagine why he was so angry and unfriendly so that she would not dislike him so much. She did not know his situation or his life. Maybe he had to go to the bathroom and did not like using airplane toilets she thought. Maybe his stomach was upset. MAYBE HE WAS FULL OF SH*T. “No Filly”, she thought to herself, “that is not the right line of thinking… get back on track”.

Just then he got up and went to the toilet.
Hmm guess that was not the problem.
Maybe he could not solve the math problem. NOW THAT she could relate too. Filly hated math problems. She loved word problems though. If she had to solve a math problem it would make her feel stressed. That was probably it. The guy could not solve the math problem and he was stressed.

When she was stressed Filly turned to prayer. She knew it seemed lame to people, probably especially seemed lame to the guy sitting on her right, but she had learned that prayer actually had great power. So she prayed to herself that she would forgive this man and not let him steal her joy.

The prayer worked. The man never stopped jabbing her but Filly did not ask to move and did not say anything else to the man. Later as she exited the plane the friendly man on the other side told her that another passenger, just before she arrived had dripped coffee on the pants and the hand of “the quilted man” and he had thrown a hissy fit.

He said that the lady had not had the spill intentionally and had apologized but that the man had not cared and had been very upset…had pretty much “gone postal” on her…even though it was just a few tiny droplets of coffee.

But Filly had managed to keep her peace with the guy and the stewardess had smiled her beaming lovely smile and brought coffee, and Filly had worked away the whole flight reading magazines and deleting things on her phone.

Turned out that the friendly man was also part of another group going to watch the baseball games. She chatted with him upon exiting the plane, and then left to join her husband and the group as they were headed to the bus, and to see the bright red and yellow tulips surrounding the airport,

and to the Chicago shoreline, the gleaming water and the cherry trees in full bloom, bending softly in the breeze. Simply glorious.

The baseball field was right across from her hotel, the destination. There were little flags on the sign of many different colors and the smell of concession food like Chicago hot dogs, peanuts and other delightful things in the air. Though rain was forecast, the sun peaked through the clouds and shone brilliantly. Filly was excited to be there and so was her husband and all the other people as well.
There were many who said that her team had cheated. That they were not really “winners” they said, but just got lucky. Filly did not believe in luck.

She had the horse shoe to prove it. It was not on the door but on the window and she had kept it because of Jesus and the angels depicted.

People make mistakes, like the guy on the plane being rude, and like herself initially starting to get angry and even like her baseball team, if they had done something illegal, even though her husband told her that all the other teams did the same things illegal and had NOT gotten caught.
These were still mistakes and had to NOT be made again.

She hoped the rude guy would stop and smell the roses. She had forgiven him and was not mad at him. She felt sorry for him. In the book of numbers, all the numbers amounted to nothing.

And as far as cheating, her team had taken the punishment for the mistake that all the teams were making but that only one team got punished for, without complaining.
The game would be fun. The pizza at the nearby restaurant was outstanding and the salad was delicious.

They even had little cake balls dipped in cocoa powder at the end of the complimentary meal for her group. The game would be great and she was excited to be here right in the middle of the it all.

She picked her randomly chosen bible verse for the day.

“If anyone causes one of these little ones — those who believe in me — to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

She agreed. She would not stumble or fall. She would not cause anyone else to either. There were some things that the enemy could not steal. Like joy. Like self confidence. Like integrity. Like determination.

Thank you Jesus, she thought, for keeping me on the right path in my thinking. That is how winning happens. Not because of numbers and not because of luck. She thought about the sign near the entrance of the hotel meant to demean her team, about how they might try to “smell the smoke” (meaning that THEIR team was on fire). They must not know about the story of beauty for Ashes…She knew about ashes… her team knew about ashes. They did not need to “smell the smoke of another team “on fire”. lol No worries there. She wished the other teams luck… but Filly did not believe in luck.