LikeTheDew.com

Someone is always trying to drag you down, to tell you that you can’t, you aren’t, you’re lacking, you’re too this or too that.

Well, phooey on them.

I’m standing in the sporting goods aisle looking at aluminum baseball bats for no good reason other than that I recently re-discovered the old bat my brothers and I used for backyard games.

It’s splintered and grey and has two tiny nails driven and crossed over to mark where you can’t see the trademark anymore. We’d worn it off and one of us evidently thought the trademark needed to be designated and there was a hammer and two nails. In drippy red paint we’d branded the bat — Woods Brothers.

Modern bats are light and fast and sparkly. I said to my spousal unit, I bet even I could have hit a ball with this thing.

A little boy wandered down the aisle, peeking and dreaming and touching the bats and balls and lingering, especially, over a long scoop of a fielder’s mitt. His brother wandered in behind him, scowling. “What are you doing? You aren’t a baseball player.”

The boy with the glove rammed onto his left hand almost snatched it off at his brother’s admonition.

Then he smacked his right fist into the webbing of the glove. “I’m trying to be,” he said.