â€å“the Greatest Accomplishment Is Not in Never Falling

I have simply myself to blame, for this all began when I asked my sister to make me an aunt and specified the course of a nephew. She complied twelve years ago with my godson James, who grew in favor earlier God and homo and then begged to nourish Redsfest.

For those of you unfamiliar with Redsfest, it is a conglomeration of baseball memorabilia merchants, interactive displays, stage shows, and shorthand sessions with Reds players, which feature the excitement of standing in line at Walmart Customer Service, combined with speedwalking to catch a malodorous double-decker to reach a job you despise, all vaguely

Every single person attending any Redsfest, ever

interrupted with a sense of continuing around a used car lot awaiting word from your salesman’due south manager that your automobile loan on the Honda Accord has been approved. It lasts xv and a half hours and it’southward 1 behemothic cynical commercial for The Cincinnati Reds, Inc., and it’s nonetheless better than winding up with a niece at a Ane Management concert. Parking is not validated.

This is the first Redsfest I’ve attended as a invitee; since returning home from living in diverse cities which host such a revolving door of small league teams that they don’t even carp linking the proper noun to the home organization and just aim for vague preposterousness (â€Å"LET’S HEAR IT FOR YOUR HOMETOWN STONE Venereal!!!!!”), I had no real concept of the length and breadth of information technology all. In the three years since my render to Cincinnati in the wake of my father’s decease, I was corralled to my chore at the Reds Hall of Fame berth, so as far every bit I knew, Redsfest was an unending 2-twenty-four hour period Q and A session with Jack Billingham well-nigh Game three of the 1972 World Series.

I agreed to this considering James, every bit a twelve-year-old boy, is reaching a stage in his life at which I’m non precisely sure how to interact with him on a human level. I’ve never been a twelve-year-erstwhile boy and I hated being a twelve-twelvemonth-old girl. We communicated beautifully when I could hold a reindeer puppet upward to his face and and so throw it over his head; this began declining to amuse him approximately a decade agone and I have been at a loss e'er since. His understanding of Boomer Esiason is that of a large human being backside a big desk. He has no concept of timing a mix tape’s final song to end before the side runs out. I had to Google his Halloween costume. He shaves.

We stand together at nearly-13 and nearly-forty, simultaneously passing into adulthood and out of the early on stage of it. He has well and truly discarded toys on his Christmas listing in favor of Under Armour tees, and I walk into 2017 on orthotics against my right foot after managing to injure information technology while standing even so. His parents take had A Discussion with him about when he is allowed to have a girlfriend at the same moment I, nonetheless awaiting the right moment for motherhood, resign myself to watching my doctor add the words â€Å"perimenopause range” to my nautical chart.

And still, despite the vast expanses of my babyhood spent at Riverfront Stadium cradling my father’s worn Pete Rose model baseball glove, James is at i with baseball at a time when I have begun to regard professional sports with biting weariness, largely unmoved past the triumphing Cubs and unaware of what the Bengals’ record even is right now.

â€Å"Sorry if he drives yous crazy,” my sis texted me, as James phoned my female parent with the announcement that Redsfest was now a mere twelve days away and she should prompt Aunt Beth to sign up for text alerts about autograph station times.

â€Å"I do understand what it’south similar to be an obsessed child,” I replied.

It would take been well for me to replace â€Å"child” with â€Å"person,” because that is what I carry forrad with me from twelve—the unfortunate, blest tendency to fall into utter emotional consumption: past gymnastics, by New Kids on the Block (close up), by horseracing, by Ohio State’s marching band (shut up), by infinite exploration, by whatever’southward coming next. This predilection for infatuation sustains me on thimblefuls of sleep even equally it exhausts everyone around me. This little girl pleaded with her parents to permit her to spend her allowance on dialing a ane-900 number… to listen in to Mission Control’s chat feed with astronauts on the space shuttle. This adult female drove viii hours one way… for a 4-infinitesimal operation by a single drum major. My godson and I stand at opposite ends of adulthood, merely nosotros are facing one another.

What exercise yous do, then, with a person whose very soul has been entrusted to you and whose life you would, if information technology came to that, gladly bribe with your own?

You take him to Redsfest.

4:00 PM: Redsfest takes place at the Cincinnati Convention Center… downtown… beginning at rush hour… on a Friday… at Christmastime. I arrive at my sister’s dwelling already on the clock, for she and my brother-in-police take their limits, and that limit is extracting their son from school ninety minutes early and then we could arrive when the doors open.

This is the start gauntlet of Redsfest, and information technology didn’t fifty-fifty involve my orthotic. Driving my nephew is forever a terrifying prospect, and I felt this manner even before Cincinnati added a streetcar as a large expensive useless potential crashing partner, and also before I managed to burn a car, Peak Gear-mode, correct down to the ground without even being in it.

Elvis Presley’s â€Å"Here Comes Santa Claus” is on the radio, and I inform my sister’due south firstborn that he is listening to the definitive version of this song. â€Å"Practice you know who’south singing?” I enquire.

â€Å"Frank Sinatra?”

We’re changing lanes, and despite this, I plough slowly around until our optics met. â€Å"I have failed you by every possible metric.”

I thought the Catholic Church banned the auction of relics

4:34 PM: This child has not been placed in my care; I have been placed in his. In the past ten minutes I have been chastised for walking outside the parameters of a crosswalk and accidentally into the camera range of some other person’s moving picture. He has also, seeing me waddling along while juggling a swagbag, my coat, a program, a canteen of h2o, car keys, my telephone, and a camera, said, â€Å"Aunt Beth? You can just put your backpack on your back.”

Every baseball card he owns of every player in attendance has been cataloged in plastic sleeves, possibly in order by amount of creepy facial hair. All pockets on his ain backpack are fully zipped, contents carefully distributed for equal weight distribution. Meanwhile I have no thought where the automobile keys I literally only had in my paw to lock the car 45 seconds ago have gone. This, so, is what happens when an MFA is paired with the eldest child of two eldest children, who themselves are both the product of two eldest:  A twelve-year-old male child out-adults the person starting to receive junk mail virtually estrogen supplements.

4:57 PM:  We run into James’ paternal grandfather,â€Å"Poppy,” along with his uncle and cousin. I am distracted by a prize wheel sponsored past Busken which offers the opportunity to bring dwelling a cookie—or many.

But James has precious trivial fourth dimension to waste material on icing. He strategically positions us in the center of the main room, my phone in his manus, initiating uncomfortable flashbacks to hovering over dorm room phones which never rang with males of the species on the other end.

â€Å"Aunt Beth,” he says, â€Å"they’re going to text you the next autograph times and the places the players are going to exist. And we take to get in line before they cut it off. And you lot have to be ready to go.”

â€Å"And so nosotros can run to stand in a line for 40-v minutes?”

â€Å"That’s the fun office.”

â€Å"Ready To Go” does not, sadly, involve a visit to the bathroom, which I must finish in very desperately, just such luxuries might disharmonize with a pending announcement, and thus nosotros are visited by the specter of a kid peevishly reminding an developed that she merely went.

5:12 PM:  In the most Due west Side matter e'er, we are now joined by my cousin Michelle, her family, her brother-in-police, and two of his children. A Mass may pause out at whatsoever moment. I post news of this on Facebook.

â€Å"Tell Michelle I said how-do-you-do!” comments 1 of my high school classmates, who in one case worked with her at P&1000.

The evening's step count:  Baseball is no game.

5:13 PM:  Michelle and I clutch at one another, niggling islands of feminine comfort.

â€Å"This is very stressful,” she says, glancing over her shoulder at her sons, also Ready To Get.

â€Å"Did they let you go to the bathroom?” Because I’ve attended life-saving surgeries containing less tension.

Over Michelle’due south shoulder is a bar, just, as booze is non known every bit aiding speed, I reject this out of manus. Baseball is no game.

5:24 PM:  Over on the chief stage is a 2016 season video recap. I practise promise there'south a DVD with a manager's cut of it available because man am I sad I missed that.

5:27 PM:  Word gets around that the next puff of autograph white smoke won’t issue for a while, so we decamp to the sports memorabilia area. James has been saving for months. Although I am entrusted with his swagbag and his sweatshirt (this crude matter serves naught merely to boring him down), James makes nada mention of request me to deport the money.

5:29 PM: My friends, at present comes the seat.

During my tenure at the Reds Hall of Fame, I watched offseason stadium workers yank every unmarried seat out of Great American Ball Park, hurl them into enormous paper-thin boxes, and supercede them with stacks and stacks of new ones. I saw them come in; I saw them come out. The seats made their style to Hamilton County, which auctioned them off in blocks; they then travelled to memorabilia dealers, and now this cafeteria table in front of my godson.

â€Å"This is a good deal,” he says. â€Å"They were going for a lot more last year. It’s both parts of the seat.”

The history minor in me loves this decision—this purchase is authentic, unusual, and unpretentious, christened every bit information technology is past the sweaty buttcheeks of untold thousands of

Sweaty, dusty history

strangers. The chore of an aunt is not that of ceasing and desisting the buy of a stadium seat, and and so I guide James only in the manner of which one he should get.

â€Å"Which number was Pete Rose?” he says, non having been warned that for reasons of mental health, Pete Rose, like The War, is never to exist mentioned around me.

â€Å"Oh, but wait, here’s Johnny Demote,” I say, waving my arm, Barker’southward Beauty-style, before a seat bearing the number 5.

â€Å"Nah,” says James, wandering downwardly the line of shopping bag-encased seats. â€Å"I desire Pete Rose.”

â€Å"That’s fourteen,” the unhelpful adult female backside the berth says, and James carefully counts some bills from his Officially Licensed Major League Baseball game Cincinnati Reds wallet, the ironic existence of which well-nigh prompts me to get a wallet of my own.

5:29 PM: â€Å"Oh ___, how much was information technology?” texts my brother-in-constabulary after I also post this triumph on Facebook.

â€Å"$35.00, completely unwashed,” I reply, the shopping purse handles already cartoon blood in the middle three digits of my right hand. It’s been a while since I helped move displays at the museum and I’d forgotten how heavy history can be when there aren’t at least four other people effectually to drag it across the room with you.

5:40 PM:  First shorthand schedule comes through; the 2 teenage boys backside united states get the text a nanosecond before I do, and, yelling â€Å"Become! GO!” at ane another, streak across the Convention Center, peradventure into a waiting chopper almost to lift away from a fireball.

5:twoscore.01 PM: It occurs to me that this is the best Saturday prep for James that a $12.75 entrance fee tin can buy:  He’s forced to sort through several options instantaneously, recall which thespian cards he owns, calculate distance from autograph line, factor in the speed of a chair-hoisting, orthotic-wearing aunt, and gauge the rarity of the player’s advent versus the probability he’ll have another crack at the same player in the next session. The consequences of Redsfest, notwithstanding, are far more weighty than his college of selection.

v:xl.02 PM: â€Å"Brandon Phillips,” says James. Phillips is scheduled to appear at the autograph station closest to usa, and we slide into line earlier it’south shut off.  The seat balanced between my legs, I lean forrad in relief:  I’ve managed not to screw this up for my godson nevertheless. Possibly one 24-hour interval I may once again eat, or fifty-fifty sit, although at the moment chairs are non among my favorite furniture items.

â€Å"Aye, this is the fun part,” says James happily.

vi:04: Brandon Phillips is now four minutes late to the signing, and consternation is growing, equally there’s no guarantee everyone here will file through earlier he has to move to the next station. This is the kids-only shorthand session, and there is much speculation in the line as to whether or not he is in the bathroom.

6:10 PM: JAMES:  I just saw George Foster!
ME:  Love, there’s crap to be signed hither. Everybody’s going see George Foster whether they want to or non.

6:eleven PM: Mr. Phillips has arrived. Seeing him make his way through the crowd, James says, â€Å"He’s wearing a pinnacle hat!” It turns out to be, in reality, a dominicus hat, but the summit hat would have surprised me less. It’s a step down from final year’s entrance on a hoverboard. I'm not the but one getting old.

six:34 PM:  Brandon Phillips achievement unlocked. This is accomplished in total silence, James gazing upwardly at the shortstop on the dais, me clicking the photographic camera, James maxim â€Å"Thank you, Mr. Phillips,” Mr. Phillips not looking upward from his text message to reply.

The lord's day had been prepare for approximately 2 hours when this picture was taken.

In the Crosley Field days, the Reds used to effect an off-flavor program containing the players’ home addresses so fans could mail off cards to be signed, a practise I heartily at present endorse.

James has a question. â€Å"Did Poppy Ron”—my father—â€Å"did Poppy Ron become autographs when he was alive?”

â€Å"Maybe a few,” I tell him, using the seat equally a battering ram to clear a path to the adjacent autograph line.

â€Å"Pete Rose?”

I felt my left centre twitch. â€Å"I guess. But we didn’t accept Redsfest when I was your age.”

James looks at me with not bad pity. â€Å"What did you have to look forward to then?”

â€Å"Full House.”

Well now I feel lamentable for me, likewise.

6:58 PM:  After directly deflecting into the line for the minor leaguer next door and visiting a pizza stand—I decline in an attempt to find food that won’t make me absolutely abhor myself so soon as it’south swallowed–  Poppy points to an eating expanse. â€Å"We can take the drinks and pizza there,” he says.

Poppy, for some reason, declined this particular culinary experience.

â€Å"Oh, no,” says James, â€Å"Aunt Beth and I need to go more autographs. I’1000 going to consume in line.”

Poppy looks get-go at me, then at James, and so back at me, cradling the seat similar a compress-wrapped kid. â€Å"We’ll catch up later on,” he says.

He is never seen again.

7:02 PM:  Through channels I shall non disclose, I take obtained an autographed baseball for my cousin’s husband, Matt, and have a four-infinitesimal window to deliver it to him in his line before the Text of Doom arrives with the locations of the next set. It’southward like living in Game of Thrones, only with less nudity and more Lance McAlister.

With James at present alligator- wrestling the seat, I run across Matt a good twenty yards abroad and make center contact. I concur the ball up and feign throwing it at him. Matt, well aware of my vast able-bodied limitations, wears an expression then horrified that it’s well worth indelible the security officer yelling â€Å"Ma’am…MA’AM!” as I duck in the line, deliver the ball from a rubber distance of four inches, and run away again.

The adrenaline has made me daring in my old historic period. I’m practically a Bond girl.

â€Å"Come on, Aunt Beth!”

vii:28 PM:  I don’t even know the name of this guy (this was the Official Theme of the Back

Thank you for taking extra time with my godson, This Guy.

Half of the 2016 Cincinnati Reds Season, past the way:  â€Å"I Don’t Even Know the Name of This Guy”) currently signing the game ticket James has placed earlier him, but he takes extra fourth dimension with my nephew. As I snap a moving picture, it occurs to me that I possibly should have worn makeup instead of dressing for mitt-to-paw combat as I accept, but then I think that this dude is pretty much exactly half my age and also I got married already.

â€Å"What’s going on with the ticket?” I asked James as he triumphantly replaced the crumple-free paper in the haversack.

â€Å"Well,” he says, zipping carefully, â€Å"I was at his major league debut this summertime, and I idea, ‘Hey, Redsfest isn’t also far away,’ and I figured he’d be hither tonight, so I saved the ticket, and he inscribed it ‘MLB debut.’”

I stare at this young man, of my genes merely not of my genes, who has displayed the foresight and patience to preserve a lilliputian scrap of a printout that someday might exist worth a mint or never attain a $.99 reserve on eBay. And he won’t care either manner; he has shaken the hand of a man who has shaken hands with the game, and he now possesses, priceless and uncreased, correct in his backpack…a tiny slice of Baseball. The entire foundation of his musical didactics is Todd Frazier’s walk-upward music and even so he has orchestrated this.

â€Å"You lot tin consume now,” James says magnanimously.

7:38 PM: â€Å"Let’s discover some salad,” I say, merely, as information technology happens, these are my choices:

-Whole entire pizza

-Chili in all its major forms (bag, box, wrapper, and hot canis familiaris bun)

-Wads of cheese

-Sugar in round class

-Sugar in flat grade

-Almonds, rolled in corn syrup, dipped in carbs, coated with butter, deep-fried in fructose and dusted with lard

-Lemonade! (this is a form of fruit, so…healthy)

Across the room I notice a stand up titled â€Å"Cincy Fresh!,” and which prominently features non one, but 2, tomatoes.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a sign featuring non i, simply two, tomatoes and the word FRESH! must offer yoga-friendly foods.

â€Å"I’m getting a salad,” I say to my nephew, who volition evenly distribute his pizza-fuel in regular intervals and then every bit to maintain properly regulated energy over the next five and a half hours. I make my way across the unabridged Convention Center to the carte board, deliberating betwixt grilled craven and salad.

You lot Sit down ON A THRONE OF LIES, CINCY FRESH

â€Å"I don’t recollect they have salad,” says James.

8:05 PM:  The Reds Team Awards are taking identify behind united states as James clutches the same freaking Kahn's Todd Benzinger bill of fare his mother and I somehow in one case had in our possession. Todd is taking his time, so the seat and I shuffle past various video feeds showing Joey Votto receive his second consecutive Ernie Lombardi Award as the Reds’ MVP.

â€Å"Does Joey take a beard?” James wants to know, eyes trained on Benzinger’south World Series ring.

â€Å"Joey does non have a bristles.” He does, however, look like he wants to murder every living thing in a twoscore-mile radius every bit he hoists his trophy in the air. Joey Votto is the Harrison Ford of this entire organization.

eight:22 PM:  Todd Benzinger is having seat epiphanies of his own. The woman in front of us hands him a yellow Riverfront Stadium seatback for him to sign. This is very exciting for Todd.

â€Å"I’ve signed blue ones and carmine ones,” he says, â€Å"but this is my first xanthous.” He looks over James’ head at me in line. â€Å"In that location were merely 4 rows of them. Right?”

â€Å"With the padded seats,” I confirm, because Todd Benzinger has included me in the conversation and there’s no backing out of this.

Here is what happens when idiot aunts effort to take a motion-picture show of a godchild and Todd Benzinger and she doesn’t sympathise how a flash works:

Hither is what happens when idiot aunts endeavor to take a picture of a godchild and Todd Benzinger and doesn’t understand how a flash works but gets a second run a risk considering Todd Benzinger is awesome:

8:31 PM:  James catches sight of Cowboy and Tracy Jones from afar and politely runs them down. The seat and I follow at a great, great distance, and I finally wind upward grabbing him past the backpack and then nosotros don’t divide, thereby running the adventure of losing him forever amidst the Eric Davis line melee, although that might comparatively mitigate any lingering anger my sister might take over this one time I stole-borrowed her all-time banana clip. â€Å"What exercise you want!” Tracy Jones hollers, because he is Tracy Jones. â€Å"I’k just kidding. How ya doing?” he says.

James returns with some other signature on the little bat he keeps in a special section of his backpack. â€Å"Tracy Jones yelled at me,” he beams.

viii:37 PM: "Aunt Beth?"

"Yes, James."

"Are you having fun?"

"How tin can you non accept fun with a fantastic seat like this around?"

"Okay. No offense, but if Poppy Ron were here, I think I'd ask him to come to Redsfest instead."

"I call up he would accept liked that."

"Come on, Aunt Beth."

8:forty PM:  The seat and I are permitted 45 seconds in the white and leathery VIP lounge, where Marty Brennaman is interviewing Reds general manager Dick Williams. Marty wants to know if anyone has any questions for Dick.

The room goes silent, because everybody has questions for Dick, only an underage child is now in the room and they perhaps cannot vox them as planned.

â€Å"Really? No questions?” Marty says equally I am pulled out the door.

"Please ask questions," I hear as we accept off down the hall.

8:47 PM: Nosotros stop past the Hall of Fame booth, that I might mingle with my former co-workers. Gone is the Mystery Ball Booth, which consisted of rows and rows of signed baseballs in brownish newspaper bags. Sometimes the signature was Billy Hamilton’southward. Sometimes the signature was bench double-decker Jim Riggleman'due south. Y'all took your chances and—when I was working there—y'all yelled at the Hall of Fame employee about bench coach Jim Riggleman and demanded your money back. Information technology was my lilliputian Christmas outburst of Bobblehead People in a wintertime globe.

This year, the baseballs were replaced by mounds of giftwrapped bobbleheads, possibly because—when I was working there—the main list deciphering the scrawled autographs usually went missing at least two-thirds of the shift.

â€Å"How’s information technology going with the bobbleheads?” I say.

They glance briefly at the kid beside me and say, â€Å"So what are y'all upwards to? Nevertheless writing?”

Redsfest:  Moving Auction of the Traded

8:51 PM:  Here’south the matter with the seat, people.  To accommodate the 225 chili-fed Cincinnatians massing before each autograph station, the Convention Middle has set up a ruby tangle of stanchions. This ways that the physical distance from Terminate of Line A to Player B is pretty much quadrupled even if the line is near empty.

James often doubles me as he dashes through the line to encounter every bit many players equally possible, calling, â€Å"Come up on, Aunt Beth!” considering he is well aware that I will 1) murder him or, worse, 2) accept him dwelling house if he darts out of my sight. Hampered by the seat weight, my full general oldness, and the bone-to-shopping-purse handle contact going on, this has go the Festivus Feat of Strength which shall be told to generations yet unborn.

9:02 PM:  Jumbo Diaz line. Nosotros have to stand a surprisingly long time, given the fact that the last time he had contact with my family at Redsfest, it was when my sister sent her five-twelvemonth-one-time to get his autograph because no one was in his line and Julie felt distressing for him.

9:fourteen PM: James is permitted a ten-yard ternion to collect the signature of Freddie Benavides, not because he particularly cares about Freddie Benavides but because â€Å"PYT” came on over the audio organization and I gotta dance.

9:32 PM: Aunt Beth pauses to register to win a margarita maker. Aunt Beth will need to use i quite heavily.

â€Å"Come on, Aunt Beth!”

9:47 PM: In the neverending Jose Peraza line, James has a moment to reflect on his life choices.

â€Å"What am I gonna practise with this seat?” he says.

9:52 PM:  A college friend lets me know that at this very moment she is squiring her niece around the mall. â€Å"Nosotros had to stop at Hot Topic, Claire’s, and Pink,” she texts. â€Å"We are fantastic aunts.”

10:04 PM: James sees Adam Duvall roaming the bounds, unchaperoned, and races off with his carte. He needs to cross half the hall to undertake this mission without me by his side and I 100% let it happen. At this indicate in the evening I don’t care if he wanders back over to the VIP lounge to downwardly tequila shots with Marty and Dick.

10:31 PM:  I have parked the motorcar here. Or here. Or here. Somewhere. James has taken over seat-hoisting duties, a gentleman caring for his own. He spots the piffling Pontiac long earlier I practice, remembering merely where we left information technology. He leads the way, merely as he has all evening, line later line, maze for maze, receding from my line of sight, further and farther away.

x:47 PM:  Belted into the car, clutching at the hateful handles of the mean seat handbag, James calls my mother with a full mail service-action debrief. â€Å"Tracy Jones yelled at me!" he says. "And I saw Todd Benzinger’south World Series band. And, y'all know how I take the Pete Rose glove that used to be Poppy Ron’s? I got a seat! A real seat with his number on it.  Fourteen.”

I miss the turn to the interstate and James does not understand why.  He thinks I am being his usual misdirected blonde non-throwing aunt. I let him.

xi:14 PM:  The grand cul-de-sac estate of my sister and brother-in-law. No ane and nothing take outburst into flame.

â€Å"I got a seat!” I hear my nephew say every bit the door closes behind me.

12:17 AM:  I study in to my husband, Josh The Airplane pilot, and describe in great and gory detail the wounds left upon my hands.

"Were at that place a lot of seats?" he says.

"Yes, a whole table," I tell him.

"Why didn't you tell James to await until the end of the night to go one?"

"When you are an aunt," I said, "you carry the chair."

He got a seat.

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Source: https://www.redlegnation.com/2016/12/07/redsfest-is-not-decadent-and-depraved/

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