OPENING DAY

Met was walking down Bush street one day and I saw him walking there but he didn’t see me. You might think Met is a strange name for a guy. And it is. But you see his parents wanted him to be a baseball player. They were both diehard Mets fans. They wanted him to be a Met. So they named the poor bastard Met. That’s that. But anyway, he’s walking down Bush street, over by Japan Town, and he’s looking all over the place. That guy’s always looking all around, always running into things too. He’s all elbows and knees, a real stick-and-bones knobby kind of guy. Long and lanky I guess you’d say if you were being nice about it. His arms are long and rubbery, like over-cooked noodles, and they’re always flapping around when he’s walking. It’s funny how his head looks on him, like a pumpkin on a stick. See, he’s got a really skinny long neck. And all his frizzy blond hair is always sticking up there on that big old head like frayed, knotted rope. The guy sure is something to see. It’s like seeing a Scarecrow walking around. So, I’m walking coming from the other way and I’m on the other side of the street, see? And so I see Met just kind of frolicking around there, skipping a little, and coming towards me over on the other side of the street there. I think, hey, maybe I’ll just go on over there and say hi to the guy. But instead, you see, I just kind of keep my distance and try to make myself there really inconspicuous, very secret-like, you see. So as he wouldn’t get wind of me. Of course Met’s so oblivious that he’d hardly notice if one of those there nuclear bombs went off right next to him. He’d just keep walking along like some guy high on gas after the dentist, looking at all the flowers, like some dickwad who’s just huffed a bunch of gas and is like seeing colors and shit all over the place. He’s almost like one of those hippie types, you know? Just real lost and not with it, out there, all airy and kind of, well, just in his own little world there. So I’m watching him walk along, and he’s going real slow and looking at all the houses and trees and stopping all the time to check out cars parked on the street and the house address numbers painted on the curb and even some trash that he finds on the sidewalk there. He seemed really whacked out. It wasn’t that unusual for him to be acting this way, so I wasn’t too concerned. It was kind of fun watching him there like that, and I started kind of laughing there to myself a little. I kept imagining like some pianola music playing, like he was in a silent film or something, and it was really funny watching him kind of trip along there like that to the music playing in my head. I was whistling and kind of clapping my hands. Boy, I must’ve looked silly standing there like that. But I was too absorbed there, what with watching Met fumbling about, to even be aware of what I was doing. I remember distinctly that I was tapping my foot and even making some clucking noises with my tongue on the roof of my mouth, and kind of swaying a little back and forth there too. I remember all of this now for some reason. Like I said, I wasn’t really aware of it then. Weird, huh? So Met was getting closer and closer to where I was. Now, I’ve never really cared for the Mets. You know how they got their blue and orange colors? They took the orange from the Giants and the blue from the Dodgers. They took the colors of two teams that left New York for the west coast, two teams that hated each other mind you, and combined them to make their uniforms. The team is like anathema to itself. Two opposing forces, two teams that screwed over Manhattan and Brooklyn respectively, two bitter rivals with a long and storied history in their ballparks, both of which were destroyed shortly after the teams left, the Polo Grounds and Ebbets Field. And now you are going to come along and create this new team that combines both of these teams into one and call them the Mets? It just seems stupid to me. Anyway. That’s not here and it definitely is not there. So, Met gets so he is almost right across the street from me. He still doesn’t see me. He stumbles over a crack in the sidewalk and almost goes down, but he doesn’t. He catches his balance and rights himself just in time, just before he bites the dust, you know? But when he gets back to his upright position he still seems kind of wobbly. He reminded me of a town drunk in an old movie. For some reason I started humming the theme song from Alfred Hitchcock Presents. I must’ve been humming it pretty loud because Met looked over at me for the first time. He recognized me and waved and started crossing the street to come chat with me and say hi. So we talked for a little. I said, “You ever meet any meat you would eat yet, Met?” I always say that to him when I see him. He doesn’t think it’s as funny as I do. After that we both said see you later and walked on our way in different directions. That was it. My fun was over. I was kind of mad at myself. I was really enjoying just watching Met like that without him knowing.