Fitzroy Fastball Junior - Blog Diary

The kids today! Fitzroy Fastball Junior and the Caveman are pretty fortunate lads. Mrs Fastball is a teacher (favourite part of teaching: July and August) so that means all kinds of fun for them the entire summer. Back in the 70s when I was a wee t-baller, summer excitement meant a double episode of the Flintstones and Spiderman with a bowl of Kraft Dinner at lunch followed by a game of "scrub" or "500 up" with the neighbourhood kids.

Let's pretend that Fitzroy Fastball Junior had a diary (in blog format of course) - if he did, a recent week would have looked something like this.

Friday July 23: Daddy is playing ball this weekend. He has some friends visiting and staying at our house. Daddy says they are AMERICANS. I can't wait to meet some real U.S. Americans! [His question to me: "Are they really Americans, Daddy?" He made it sound like he was meeting the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus.]

Saturday July 24: Met the Americans this morning. They seem pretty much like normal people, except they talk a bit funny. They left a bunch of "Genny Light" cans around the house. I asked Daddy if it was beer and he laughed and said "more like monkey piss", and then Mommy got mad at Daddy for using a bad word.




Later on in the day, we got to go watch some of Daddy's games at the tournament. Caveman and I were excited. Daddy wasn't playing though. He just stood near third base waving his arms around. So at the second game Caveman and I kept bugging Daddy saying "when will you play, Daddy, go in and hit, we want to see you play". Finally Daddy went in to hit and did his grunting thing when he swung at the ball. He tried hard but he didn't hit it very far and the other guy caught it. Caveman and I tried not to laugh and told him good try.

Monday July 26: Tonight was drop in softball night that Daddy runs down at the Community Centre. Caveman and I went as well as six other kids. We got to catch some pop flies, get some grounders and practice hitting. It was funny when Caveman took his turn to hit. After watching Daddy on the weekend, every time Caveman swung the bat he grunted "arrrrggghhh" just like Daddy does!

Tuesday July 27: Daddy was playing ball again and it was an early game so Mommy said we could watch some of it. Daddy kept hitting it right to the other team - he's not near as good as #15 Trevor. He's my favourite player.

Wednesday July 28: Today Mommy and I and a bunch of other mommies and kids went on a big bike ride in the big city. We left Caveman behind with Cousin Dilly - he slows us down too much with his training wheels. When we got to the big city, we met this guy that Mommy said was kind of famous. I've never heard of him - Mommy said his name was Max Creeping or something like that.

[Note the dart in Max's hand]

Thursday July 29: Today was definitely my most fun day so far of the summer! First, Grandma took me to the mini-putt. And we also got to go the driving range for the first time. I hit one out ninety yards. Caveman tried as well - but it looked like he was taking slap shots with his golf club. Then we went back to Grandma's pool for a swim.

Next up was a visit to Uncle at the fire station. He is so cool! We got to go for a ride in the ladder truck. Then Uncle let us use the joystick to move the aerial ladder around from the ground. It's easy, just like a video game. When Caveman got to try I think Uncle was a bit worried as he was moving it around really fast and the whole fire truck started to shake! Then they had to put the truck back in the station.

After that was the breakdancing class at the Library with B-Boy Breadcrumbs. [Note: Fitzroy Junior is probably the whitest person in Fitzroy - and that's a pretty significant accomplishment. If you have never met him in person, he looks something like this. Mrs Fastball and I are just hoping he doesn't turn out like this.]

I was very excited to learn all the cool breakdancing moves. I am pretty good at most of the dance steps. [No he's not.] Caveman was too young to go to the lesson, but I am teaching him all I know.

At the end of the day, we got to go to go see Ambush at the Concert in the Park. I busted out a few of my new dance moves and for the very last song I got to go on stage in front of the huge crowd! They let Caveman on stage as well - good thing too or he might went after one of the old band guys.

What a day! When I went to bed that night, Daddy told me "don't expect every day to be like today".

There you have it - not a bad week for a seven year old.