Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

 

I came out of the bathroom.

I’ve done it before.

It’s no magic act, but I try to come out of a bathroom as often as I go in. It’s one of the secrets to a happy life.

I opened the door and heard a loud, “Boo!”

I don’t need to be frightened when coming out of bathrooms. Bathroom mirrors showcasing some old guy pretending to be me are scary enough.

My granddaughter had ambushed me. If Joey had been trying to scare me, it worked. She said she thought I was her sister.

Yeah, right.

I’m like most folks. My calendar is part Rubik’s Cube. The Rubik’s Cube is a puzzle where cubes are moved in as many as 2,125,922,464,947,725,402,112,000 permutations. That’s honors math stuff right there. Some guy solved the Rubik’s Cube in 3.47 seconds. He’d be unable to make sense of my calendar.

My calendar is ambitious and everything happens at the same time, but I try not to miss family things, especially doings involving grandchildren. I enjoy watching them do anything, even picking their noses.

At a basketball game, the digital device hooked into the gym’s sound system wasn’t doing its job. Time passed. Everyone remained standing. Standing up isn’t everyone’s comfort zone, but you can’t keep a good fan down. The fans started singing our national anthem. Some sang well, some not so well, but most sang. Poor singers blamed their performances on the lack of musical accompaniment. A few of the fans were accomplished crooners. Such singing should inspire the rest of us to reach new heights in vocalizing, but it tends to make us shut up and listen.

I stood up again from my bleachers seat at another game during a break in the action on the floor when a coach called a timeout. Someone waved. I waved back. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t waving at me, but she looked familiar. Once you know enough people, everyone looks familiar. I waved back, just in case she was waving at me. I didn’t want to take the chance of seeming uppity. Besides, it’s better to be recognized as a fool than to leave any doubt.

My granddaughter Joey was two points shy of setting an all-time record for scoring the most points in basketball (boy or girl) at her high school. She was fouled. It was no fluffy foul. She went to the line for two shots. The free throws were Lawrence Welks — a one and a two.

“You need to make them when you’re not being guarded,” said one of my old coaches.

The free throw line was 15 feet away from a 10-foot high basket. I realized that no one makes every shot and if you’re not going to shoot 100 percent, you have to miss a shot occasionally. A friend told me he was a 50 percent free throw shooter every year he played basketball. I asked how that could be.

“Every shot either went in or it didn’t,” he said in an impressive display of poor math skills.

Joey toed the line. Another old coach preached, “Ball, elbow, knees and toe, all in a row, helps the ball go through the hole.”

I knew she could make free throws without my help, but I crossed my fingers anyway. I figured it couldn’t hurt.

The first shot twinkled the twine. Nothing but nylon. I said, “Zap!” It wasn’t the best response, but it’s what came out of my mouth. Another of my forgivable grandfatherly antics. She was one point away from the record.

Zap is an exclamation used to express sudden or swift action. It originated in a 1928 issue of “Amazing Stories” featuring Buck Rogers. The “Buck Rogers” science-fiction strip made its first newspaper appearance in 1929. Buck’s job was to investigate reports of unusual phenomena reported in abandoned coal mines in Pennsylvania. He was in a mine during a cave-in. Exposed to radioactive gas, Rogers fell into a state of suspended animation, free from the ravages of aging. He remained that way until awakening in 2419. That’s when his adventures truly began. He had imitators like Flash Gordon.

Back to the basketball game.

Another free throw. Swisheroo, it went through! String music! I jumped up. I might have used some Batman fight words,” Biff! Wham! Bonk! Kapow! Boom! Pow! Bam!” I might have repeated, “Zap!” but I couldn’t hear myself for all the cheering.

I knew it was a big deal because a guy wearing a retina-damaging Hawaiian shirt spilled all his Cheetos.

It was a family-sized bag.

Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Saturday.