Mother's Day weekend with the Curmudgeon clan -- Part III (the case of the baseball tickets)

Bee, I promise, this is not really a sports post.

My friend Steve is in a Chicago White Sox season ticket plan with three other guys. The seats are in the outfield, but right down in front, so you can see everything that happens. They're good seats.

But Steve and his comrades split the tickets up before the beginning of the season, before all their respective schedules are set. Steve in particular has encountered problems with his schedule before because of the frequent travel he does on behalf of the charity he works for now that he's "retired."

One such conflict arose this past weekend. I'm not sure where he needed to go, but he did, and he offered me the tickets for Saturday night's game against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Orange County, California. There was only one condition: "See that they're used," he said. "I only ask that there be fannies in the seats. Then I don't feel bad."

That's not an unreasonable request, I agreed. "But I can't go," I told him. "Older Daughter is coming in; we have to pick up Youngest Son. It's just too complicated."

"Well, maybe one of the kids will want them," Steve suggested.

"Maybe."

"So ask. But get back to me, please. If no one at your house can use them I have to try and place them somewhere else."

This was last Wednesday, I think.

I thought of Olaf and Younger Daughter. Maybe they could get friends and go. Olaf graduated; he can have a night out now and again. It's a good thing.

And Younger Daughter thought so too when I mentioned it.

"I'll ask around," she said.

"So ask," I said. "But get back to me, please. I promised Uncle Steve I'd get back to him." (Steve is not actually related by blood or marriage. But the kids all call him Uncle. His wife, though also unrelated to them, is Aunt Charlotte.)

"Don't worry," she said.

I should have worried.

The first thing Younger Daughter did was ask her sister if she and Hank might want to go. But Hank has to sing in Indianapolis on Sundays -- still, he was interested, Older Daughter said. "We could head home straight from the park," Hank allegedly told her. "It's on the way." But they would have had to leave the dog in Indy -- the little bunnies might have survived! -- but, alas, as I mentioned previously, Cork had worn out his welcome at the home of Hank's parents (and they have their own golden retriever).

Then Older Daughter suggested that, if they could stay until the end of the game Saturday night if they went to the ballpark, they could stay in Chicago until the end of the game at our house. Hank was not buying.

All this is easy to relate, but it took time.

It was Friday already and Younger Daughter hadn't found a home for the tickets. In the meantime, she had her own colonoscopy to deal with. Olaf's asked some of his friends, she told me, but she hadn't heard anything yet. What about Youngest Son, she asked. We'd be picking him up on Saturday. Maybe he could get a group together for the night game. "So ask," I said. "But get back to me, please. This is not a nice thing we're doing here stringing along Uncle Steve like this."

Youngest Son texted back that he was interested, but he wasn't sure if he could get a group.

In the aftermath of her procedure, Younger Daughter was losing interest in going also. She was knocked down a peg by the whole process and wasn't feeling at all well.

And the next thing I knew it was Saturday morning. I asked again who was taking the tickets. I knew by now Older Daughter and Hank weren't going: We had the bunny-eating dog. But Younger Daughter wasn't sure whether she and her husband might yet go; it depended on how she felt. And she was waiting to hear from some people she'd asked.

"Look," I said, as I stormed out the door for South Janesville College, "I don't care who you get. I'm not going. Your mother is not going. But find some bodies for the seats, pick up the tickets from Uncle Steve, and remember to say thank you. Get this settled before I get home."

And when I got back home, all was settled and done -- and that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I wound up at the Sox game Saturday night, along with Long Suffering Spouse and Youngest Son. (No, I didn't understand what happened either. Still don't.) Youngest Son who was apparently already sick by Saturday night -- he'd really be out of it on Sunday, much to the amusement of his brothers, when they came calling. "I haven't been to the ball game in a couple of years," said Long Suffering Spouse, and that was nice, I guess. She might have enjoyed the game more, though, if it weren't 48̊ at game time -- 46̊, according to the outfield scoreboard, before the game was through. And if the wind weren't howling the whole game.

Oh, and it might have helped if the White Sox had won.

But you can't have everything.