Yesterday’s post was titled, “Good News.” A friend of mine, and a reader of this blog, made some hilarious comments about baseball bats and having batting practice in my old neighborhood. (She is a character–as anyone who knows her knows! Thanks for the support and the laugh!)
Anyway, it reminded me of my most memorable experience with a baseball bat.
The day I broke my nose.
You see, He had just purchased a batting cage and pitching machine and my spouse installed it in our back yard. (I know, I know. Based on what I now know, it was most likely “purchased” with stolen money. And yes, I know, owning the same pitching machine used by the Colorado Rockies professional baseball team is a bit over the top for the average suburban family–which I thought we were–yet now I see NEVER were! What can I say? My former spouse never did things quite the same as everyone else. He was creative, enthusiastic and “over the top.” Thus, the pitching machine and batting cage in the back yard.)
Anyway, as soon as it was installed, He took me into it to show me how it worked. He told me where to stand, turned the machine on, and stood in there with me as pitches came and I hit baseballs. The speed was set at 30 mph. I turned out to be quite a slugger.
Within the week, a friend came over. He said he heard we had a pitching machine and he asked me to show him how it worked. I went out there with him, got in the cage with him, showed him where to stand, turned the machine on, and stood there as he hit balls. (I didn’t know a lot about baseball, or pitching machines, if you can’t tell. I was just doing what had been done when I was given a demonstration of the machine.)
My back was to him for awhile as I looked through the netting at the beautiful summer evening, flowers blooming, puffy clouds, hummingbirds flying. I must have turned around to watch him again right as he tipped a ball…straight into my nose.
The crack sounded like he had hit the ball out of the park!
Nope. Just into my nose. (I found out later my former spouse had gone in the batting cage and cranked up the pitching speed to 90 mph. He forgot to tell me.)
It actually didn’t hurt much at all (must have been the shock.) But I felt something begin to run, and worried about looking disgusting with blood running down my face not to mention not wanting to get blood on anyone, I put my hands to my nose to catch it.
My friend could have died. Can you imagine the poor guy? Totally not his fault, but there I stand, my hands filling with blood, and I was probably in a little bit of shock!
“Let it go, Andrea,” he said. I was doubled over trying to hide the mess I was sure was coming, but I managed a, “No! It’s going to be a mess.”
He said again, “Let it go, Andrea,” grabbed my hands, and I let it all go. (Another friend who was watching almost got sick. I could see it in his eyes, too. Poor guy!)
My friend walked me up to my house, and by the time we got there, both of us were a bloody mess. I went to the ER, I was told my options (fix it or not fix it) and sent home with an ice pack.
I’m totally a wimp when it comes to medical procedures, so I kept looking at my nose and trying to convince myself it wasn’t that bad, wasn’t that crooked, that only I could see the deviation because I’m such a perfectionist about some things. Like many infamous politicians, I “flip-flopped” back and forth. One moment I was going to have my nose straightened, the next moment I was not going to have my nose straightened. (Lets just say, if you saw the medical instruments they use to straighten a nose, you’d probably be tempted to leave yours crooked too.)
My college friend called when she found out, and she gave me great counsel about my life decision at that time. She said, “Andrea, we’re getting older. Changes are coming. There is not a lot we’ll be able to control or do about a lot of those things. Wrinkles are going to come and there is nothing you can do about them. But you CAN do something about your nose. You can choose to be old and wrinkled with a perfect nose, or you can choose to old and wrinkled with a crooked nose. Fix what you can fix so you don’t have any regrets when you’re old.”
She was so right.
I got my nose straightened. It actually took two tries because during the first attempt in the doctor’s office, I passed out (the doctor had a medical term for it and it scared him enough he didn’t dare attempt my procedure in his office, we had to reschedule in the operating room at a hospital!) And I counted my blessing that the ball had hit my nose and not my teeth! (I’d had braces twice already. What a tragedy, lol, if I lost my teeth after all of that hard work!)
Many things are handed to us in life that we have no control over and can’t really do anything about. Those things we let go–we gracefully endure and continue living in spite of their addition to our life. (And we try to find something good about our life, something we can be grateful for, even if it’s just the fact that we still have our teeth!:)
But SOME things we CAN “fix.” (Or at least give it our best shot at attempting to fix or make right.) And THEN we let go–we gracefully endure and continue living with or without them, depending on our success at fixing them. (And we try to find something good about our life, something we can be grateful for, even if it’s just the fact that we once had teeth!:)
And then we don’t look back. We press forward and carry on and look for the new day.
I heard a very wise man, Thomas S. Monson, once say something like, “The two most worthless words in the English language [or perhaps in any language] are ‘if only.’” He encouraged people to not look back or wistfully sigh about “if only,” but to look forward with hope, and make each day the best we can with what we are given.
Good advice for the outcomes in batting cages…and life!
