A Whole New Ballgame

It’s Sunday afternoon. Linda is running errands. The baby is napping upstairs and there’s an all-you-can-watch sports buffet on TV. The Twins are playing the Royals in a crucial series. The undefeated Vikings are playing the undefeated 49ers, and the FedEx Cup Championship is on the line with Tiger in the lead.

I flop on the couch and search for the remotes. I find one remote—the one that turns on the set—but I can’t find the crucial DVR control. Without this I’m out of luck. I can’t channel surf, pause, rewind, record, fast-forward through commercials, and watch two games on the same screen, all those things that have suddenly become essential functions of the couch experience.

Where can the remote be? I crawl around on the floor, peering under the furniture, checking Bobby’s toy box. Then I hear something from upstairs.

RAAARAAAH RAAH RAAH.

Oh boy. The party is over. The little dictator is calling out from his crib. He only slept a half-hour. I was hoping for two or three hours.

I open the door to his bedroom and his face lights up. He shakes the bars of his crib like a rebellious inmate. “Dahdahdahdah,” he says with great emphasis before toppling back onto his bottom.

With his head piled high with ringlets, he looks like someone dumped a bowl of pasta noodles on his head.

As I open the shades to the afternoon sun, he picks up the stuffed animals from his crib and one by one hurls them onto the floor. I bend to pick them up and he finds it absolutely hilarious. He laughs so hard he falls over backward again.

I pick him up, and it becomes immediately and overwhelmingly apparent that something is baking in his diaper.

At some point after his first birthday, Bobby decided that having his diaper changed was the absolute worst form of torture any baby could endure. So now the diaper change is like wrestling with an octopus.

He kicks and pulls and screams and twists. With one hand I try to keep his feet from landing in the dirty diaper. With the other, I try to pull out a wet wipe from the dispenser. But as is always the case when you need it the worst, it’s impossible to extricate just one wipe from the dispenser. I yank frantically and a chain of wipes comes out as the dispenser topples to the floor.

When the battle is over and the diaper is changed, all is forgotten and forgiven. He gladly lets me lift him off the table and we head downstairs. I set him on the floor and he immediately takes off like a wind-up toy. He ventures to his books, then to his toys. Pushing buttons and pulling levers, he sets off a cacophony of happy noises and tunes. “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” plays over the “ABC” song.

As he plays, I watch the Twins. I still need the DVR remote to change channels to the Vikings. I continue my search. In the corner, I spot the cover from the back of the remote. In the front hall I step on one of the Duracell batteries from the remote, so I must be getting warm.

The other battery I find under the dining room table. Finally, in the kitchen, next to the dog’s water dish, I see the remote.

I replace the batteries and start flipping through the channels in search of the Vikings. But once Bobby sees the remote in my hand, he becomes fixated. Despite all the toys with their bright colors and blinking lights, none of them captures his attention like the remote.

With his eyes fixated on the prize, he totters towards me like a drunk zombie.

“No, no, Bobby. Daddy needs to find his game. Daddy needs the remote.”

The game of remote keep-away elicits an ear-piercing scream of protest.

Staggering in fitful circles, he raises his hands up to heaven, beseeching God to right this terrible wrong. He collapses to the floor in despair and begins to wail.

“OK, OK,” I say, unable to endure the tears. “Here, you can have it for just a moment.” He immediately stops crying and emits a quiet little chuckle of satisfaction. “But please don’t change the chann—”

With astounding speed, he goes from the game to a Somali community television talk show. “OK, that’s enough. Let Daddy have the clicker so he can watch his football game.”

But before I can pry the device from his grasp, he hits a mysterious sequence of buttons that causes the DVR to seize up.

He looks with glee upon the blank blue screen that he is somehow responsible for.

While I try in vain to bring the television back to life, the dog walks by and Bobby pursues his tail. Despite weighing nearly a hundred pounds, Fletcher runs from Bobby like he’s the school bully.

Meanwhile, my frustration level rises as I try in vain to reprogram the DVR. I give up and throw down the remote. It’s too nice a day to be inside watching television anyway.

“OK, boys, let’s go for a walk.”

The mere mention of the “W” word brings Fletcher back into the room panting excitedly. I grab a sippy cup and Cheerios—lots and lots of Cheerios—for the walk.

We head out into the neighborhood. It feels good to get out of the house, which was starting to feel awfully small with an active 15-month-old and a rambunctious dog. I put on the headphones and listen to the football game on the radio.

Fletcher wants to stop at every tree, and Bobby repeatedly turns his sippy cup upside down, dousing himself with water before hurling the cup onto the street.

The kid has it made: he eats his Cheerios by the fistful, watching the world go by. I would love to be pushed around the neighborhood in a stroller stocked with snacks and a sippy cup full of gin to pacify me. Maybe I should start an adult stroller business.

We continue on to the park. The Vikings have blown the lead. It’s 24-20 49ers.

Bobby recognizes the swing set a hundred yards away. He nearly jumps out of his stroller pointing and yelling, “Dadadadadada!!!”

The Vikings have one last chance to score. I really want to head home to watch this dramatic finish on the basement TV.

“Dadadadada!!!” Bobby persists.

Oh well. Let’s go swing. I put him in the bucket seat of the swing set.

Brett Favre takes the field. He has 80 yards to go in 89 seconds. I start to swing Bobby. Boy, I wish I were recording or watching this game.

The tension builds. Bobby wants to swing higher and higher. There’s only 12 seconds left, the ball is on the 49ers’ 32-yard line. Favre goes back to pass, he avoids a rusher, scrambles some more.

Bobby wants to go higher.

Favre throws to the back of the end zone. The announcer, Paul Allen, screams, “Touchdown!!! Touchdown!!! Greg Lewis in the back of the end zone!”

I yell and clap my hands. “Bobby, the Vikings won. Brett Favre did it!”

You could watch 30 years of Vikings football and not see an ending as exciting as this—and I missed it. But as I look down at Bobby clapping along with his daddy, I know there’s no place I’d rather be.

—WCW