Wait, wait, wait. Is Rick Springfield performing here?

Good morning!

You are coming to the ball game with us. Now
get on your horse and let's go!

So this past Wednesday my friend Buttercup  (she's a MASSIVE "Princess Bride" fan, even a bigger fan than I am)and her husband convinced Hubby and me to go out in the middle of the week.  We went to a Milwaukee Brewers game.  I haven't been to a major league baseball game in a couple years, even though the Brewer's stadium, Miller Park, is about a fifteen minute drive from my work.  In the last couple years I've sort of stopped going a lot of places, (other than Rick Springfield concerts, you understand) because I find myself more and more anxious and exhausted for reasons I haven't yet explored.

Anyway, so we went to the ball game, and we were having a really, really lovely time. There were no lines to stand in, even in the public restroom, which was completely acceptable for use.  The weather was perfection, there were no bugs, and since I'm not really invested in baseball, it didn't matter than much that the home team was losing.

For those of you who know American baseball, the 7th inning is pretty close to the end of a regulation game.  We were in the 7th inning, enjoying a really great night, when it happened.  See, Buttercup and her husband were in two seats two rows behind us.  So there was a row between us.  It hadn't mattered because there was no one in those seats, so we were able to talk back and forth with them.  

Since my car accident it's been difficult for me to turn my head so when SOMEONE came and sat behind us, I thought it was Buttercup and her husband trying to make conversation easier for me.  I turned my head just enough to see a flash of straight auburn hair and figured it was Buttercup sitting right behind me now.

I made some comment, or something before I realized, mostly because of the beer stench wafting over me, that this was NOT Buttercup.

But because I spoke, the woman I will now call Cheap Drunk thought we were friends.

"Hey, how about this?"  She spoke pleasantly enough, in spite of the foul stale brewery stank rolling off of her, "we just got here.  It's what, like the 7th inning, and we're just getting here."  

Insert annoying laugh here.  Then insert some sort of uninteligible gibberish from her man, the equally inebriated "Cheap Drunk's Old Man," who, Buttercup told me later, spent his time trying to stick his tongue in various openings on Cheap Drunk's head.

Did I mention these people were of an advanced enough age where this sort of behavior was just, really...sad?

So Cheap Drunk holds up her beer can, which I find strange since I hadn't seen people selling beer in cans.  Mostly I saw plastic cups or those aluminum bottles.  "Can you believe it?"

I turn around, mostly because I'm a polite person and I can't simply ignore people who are talking to me...(that's how I got two of my three credit cards.)  and I see her holding the beer can pretty much over my head.

"Can you believe it, we snuck these in...they didn't take them from us or nothin'."

She might be right, she might have sneaked beer into the stadium...but I could think at that moment was, "Is Rick Springfield playing after the game, because people like this ONLY wind up behind me at Rick Springfield concerts!"

(Readers if this blog know that I've shared concert air with some of the great female drunks of the 21st century:  Red from Memphis, Mean Lady, and of course, my favorite, Date Night.  All drunk, all spilling drinks usually on me, and all at Rick concerts.)

But Cheap Drunk wasn't done being social in spite of the fact I turned away.  (If she was going to dump beer on me, I didn't want it to get in my eyes.)  It was the bottom of the 7th and the Brewers sent their first batter of the inning out.  Brewers were down by three runs.  Cheap Drunk yells, "Okay Buddy, let's get a Grand Slam!"

(A grand slam, for those of you not in the know, is when a batter hits a home run while there are men on the other three bases, thereby giving the batting team four runs.  In this situation a grand slam would have been impossible because, well, there was NO ONE ELSE ON BASE!)

I'm not sure if Cheap Drunk's Old Man took his tongue out of her ear long enough to explain that detail to her, or if Buttercup and her husband said something, but Cheap Drunk realized the stupidity of her request. "Oh, well, I guess you can't get us a grand slam, can you?"  she shouts.

Lord have mercy.

For the next several minutes, Hubby and I spend a lot of energy trying to ignore her incessant chatter about everything and to everyone.  The only time she shuts up is when she takes a gulp out of her seemingly bottomless beer can.  I'm relieved when she drinks because I know every ounce that goes in her face is one less that's going to wind up on my head.

At some point during the early part of the 8th inning, Cheap Drunk realizes she is not amusing us or anyone in our section.  That's when she gives us what I can only imagine she thinks is her Gettysburg address.

"I am here for the fun."

Okay...

"I don't care about the crappy play or who wins or whose talking to me or what people think.  I'm here for the fun."

And with that mighty statement that would echo through the age, she and the old man got up and left.

Hey stick around after the game!  I'll be putting on a
concert just for Sarah because she's the one who
winds up sitting in front of messy drunks all the time.

Which is about the time I started looking around for people wearing Rick Springfield t-shirts because I JUST KNEW he had to be playing after the game.  It didn't happen, of course, but now I'm on the lookout every time I wind up sitting in front of someone who is inebriated and looking for a new best friend...or at least someplace to dump her drink.