Damon had a baseball game scheduled for last night. It had rained off and on all day, and we were told that the Board president would make the call at 3:15. If no game, we had batting practice scheduled for an hour at an indoor facility. The firstborn would need picked up from work after the game. I was fervently hoping for a cancellation.
It was game on.
Of course it was. You knew it would be.
So I popped a big umbrella into Pepe the Pilot, along with both my raincoat and a hooded wool coat, a camp chair was already in the back, and put on my waterproof pants and rainboots.
I figured I was all set.
When I got there, I looked at the umbrella and thought, "that thing is huge. I'm going to block a lot of people's line of sight, and if I really need an umbrella that badly, surely they'll call the game for rain." So I left it in the car.
I put on the raincoat, thinking I didn't want to smell like a wet sheep in my wool coat, and that I'd have something warm and dry to put on or over the kid on the way home.
Assuming I'd stay drier in a chair I brought instead of on the wet bleachers, I set up my camp chair and figured if I stayed put, everything under me would stay dry.
You can see the puddle forming on the far side of the yellow curb. The field we were scheduled for had a huge puddle at first base already. The boys were testing the depth of the various ones around the dugout. I thought, "welcome to Mudball 2022."
The men in charge decided to switch fields. The handful of parents there loaded up their umbrellas and various other items and we meandered to the other field, which was positioned at a 90 degree angle to how we had been facing along the third base dugout at the original field. Now the not-quite-rain-but-decidedly-more-than-mist was blowing into the remnants of my eyelashes and face. Thankfully, it was still around 60 degrees and the wind wasn't nearly as bad as it has been other evenings.
Well, let's just cut to the chase and say that my waterproof clothing... wasn't. Or the rain was steadfast enough to penetrate everything patiently. Incidentally, camp chairs are shaped like bowls and made of a fabric which sucks up and retains water. Guess who felt the equivalent of a kid's plastic IKEA cup of water being dumped into the bottom of my pants when I shifted positions? Yes, that's the face I made, too.
The boys came out in their last inning with towels crammed under their hats. There had been amazingly few slides. Parents cracked up most of the times the pitcher picked up the ball, shook wet sand off his hands, rubbed the ball on his pants or on his towel or on whatever looked remotely close to dryish, then looked around in dismay for somewhere to stash said towel. You could see him thinking, "I don't want it in my back pocket, but I can't leave it in the soup that is the pitcher's mound..."
The kids were terrific. I didn't hear a complaint out of them. There were some errors, as happens at this age, and it wasn't a high scoring game, but I think they had a good time anyway.
We made it home, both of us soaked to the skin, and Damon declaring, "I'm wearing three layers and my underwear is still wet!" I hear ya, buddy. My fingers were pruney and I wasn't even doing anything. I've actually stayed drier after being thrown into a swimming pool.
But, being water resistant, we dried off and warmed up, I collected the firstborn and the baseball player conked out, warm and toasty in his jammies, full of toast.
I think we will not be waterlogged by the time Friday's game rolls around...
