Henry played summer league baseball this summer. David coached. Summer baseball is a break from the local gynocracy. Men, who are, weekdays, largely absent and irrelevant, assume positions of responsibility and leadership, while the women observe and judge. Some women coach, but these overprepared head coaches are assisted by the men, who are expected to get their asses home for this, get themselves out to the first-base line, and yell at the children.

Force at second! Make the relay! Run it out!

One woman had to tell her husband to take it easy. Afterwards I tried to comfort him by telling him that his yelling was useful. He went back to yelling, the next game or the game after.

There are some things everyone yelled. Nice job! Good work everyone! Nice playing! You know.

The smaller children ran amok, or squirmed on our laps. Then we would say to them, Run amok! John shared his gum beautifully and was hit in the shoulder by a tennis ball. Everyone told me they've never seen my children cry. This is crazy, but I accepted it as a complimentary statement about something else.

I sat, Coach’s wife, on the sidelines, and talked. About three games into the season I realized that while I thought that someday, or never, I would choose who my friends were, whom I would care about, whose children would be important to me, someone, possibly me, has already chosen for me. These are the people I know, whose lives are intertwined with mine, and they will be for at least the next fifteen years, unless we move away from here and try to live somewhere we don’t know anyone, again.