Last week my 12 year old son and I made a bet.
It was his idea, because betting me is easy money. I wouldn’t be surprised if Congress stopped mid-trying to balance the budget with a “Eureka! Let’s just bet Marinka the amount of the deficit!”
Anyway. He wanted to bet on the outcome of the World Series. I was game. Because if there’s one thing that I’m confident about, it’s my ability to pick a winner of that particular contest.
“You are on, young man,” I said, except without the young man part because what am I, 90? “I just have a few questions.”
I actually had only one question, specifically, which teams are in the World Series. If you’re spoiler-free, you may want to skip this part, but it turns out that the Cardinals and the Red Sox are jostling for the World Series Championship.
“Ok,” having been armed with this useful information, I was ready to proceed.
“Which do you want, the Cardinals or the Red Sox?” my son asked.
I didn’t want to show my hand, the hand of having no idea, so I smiled at him with what I hoped was a great deal of baseball wisdom.
“Why don’t you pick,” I said.
“Cardinals!” he said.
“Yes, that’s an interesting choice,” I nodded sagely. By the way, have you noticed that when people say something is interesting in response to whatever it is you’re droning on about, they usually mean it in the complete opposite sense? Interesting to ponder, no?
“That means you have the Red Sox,” he explained to me. He had met me on previous occasions so he had a keen understanding of my baseball knowledge.
And so we were off.
He wrote up our Betting Contract.
If the Cardinals win, I am supposed to supply him with endless Forbidden Snacks and if the Red Sox win, he’s going to unload the dishwasher every day for two weeks, complaininglessly.
So the tensions are high.
They are made higher by the fact that I keep forgetting which team I bet on and the pain he feels in having to remind me.
“Ugh, why do they have those horrific beards?” I ask and he doesn’t answer.
Last night, I overheard him talking to the TV. “Come on, Beltran,” he was saying, “I don’t want to have to unload the dishwasher.”
Unfortunately we have one of those old-fashioned TVs where the people inside can’t hear what you’re saying to them.
So far the Red Sox are leading the series. I just hope there’s not a smoothest shave category.
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