Friday Fragments

Welcome to Friday Fragments! Please join me in thanking Mrs. 4444 for encouraging us to take all of those little bits and pieces of thoughts and assembling them into one post. Think of it as a crazy quilt of randomness.

It always amazes me how two people can look at the exact same thing and come up with 100% different conclusions. My co-worker was telling about how her sisters were trying to convince their father to give up smoking. My thought was "Ah, how nice. They are showing that they care." and then she continued on to say "They should just leave him alone. It is his life." I didn't get the impression that they were harassing the poor man but rather had just suggested that he try to quit for health reasons. I see love and she sees interference.

Our local high school participated in an "Every 15 Minutes" alcohol awareness program this week. For those of you not familiar with this, they reenact a drunk driving accident and the ramifications. They showed the accident (complete with a passenger thru the windshield and blood) and had emergency vehicles come and take the patient to the hospital with the parents following. They "arrested" the driver, had a hearse take away a deceased person, etc. The next day, they held a mock funeral. They had parents participate. I am not sure I could do it. Very powerful. They also had the grim reaper show up in classrooms every 15 minutes to take students away. The students then returned to class with special t-shirts like they were ghosts and couldn't talk for the rest of the day. After the grim reaper's visit, they would read the obit as an announcement for the entire school to hear. My only complaint about this program is that the announcements were distracting for my son and his fellow classmates who were taking an AP exam. Just would have been nice to pick a different day and not interrupt an exam. Just sayin'.

My son told me today that the AP Art, Calculus, Physic and English classes are going on a "field trip" to Boston since their work for the school year is basically done. I asked why the AP US History class wasn't going too. His immediate answer was "They are Juniors, Mom. Why would they go?" "Um, you are a sophomore and you are going." "Well, that's different."

The weather forecast for our little part of the world looks good this weekend and should be 75 and sunny on Sunday. You guessed it! I am planning on reclining on my new lounger with a class of iced tea in one handle, my kindle in the other and my dog next to me. Oh, yeah. The husband can recline too.

My co-worker's son is playing Little League so I volunteered to help out in the concession stand for one of his games. It was weird to be back in a place that I spent many many hours at a few years ago. Oh, how I miss the baseball games and watching my boy-o play.

In our small town, we have a relatively small Little League program. My son's last season in Little League started off questionable when his team was dissolved and he had to be redrafted onto another team. Of course, he didn't end up on the team he was hoping for. That year, there were 3 teams in his league. One was extremely stacked, one (his team) was average and the remaining team was not very good. Strangely enough, he wanted to be on the team that wasn't very good. One night, his (new) coach put him in as a relief pitcher and he did a great job. The next game, he was told that he was going to be the starting pitcher! Wow. What a great feeling. However, they were going against the undefeated team. Hopefully, they would be able to play an entire game and not get cut short because of the 10 run mercy rule. That was my hope anyway. When my husband showed up at the end of the first inning, he looked at the scoreboard and assumed that my son's team was losing. He was stunned to hear that our boy-o was pitching and his team was winning! How could it be? The game continued on in that vein. Our team was hitting everything and their team was not hitting much at all. At one point, a father came up to me and said "I know I could stab myself in the heart right now and it wouldn't matter because this is obviously a dream!". My son had an outstanding game. He went 4 for 4 at the plate, pitched a complete game AND made it home on a passed ball to end the game. My wish didn't come true. They did end the game early. However, it was because the other team was behind by 10 runs. Yup. Not only did they win, they mercy-ruled them. Happy Dance! Oh yes, the good old days. How I wish he hadn't decided to give up baseball.

One of my niece's fellow musicians at the University of Maine is one inspirational gal who is fighting cystic fibrosis. If you want to read about someone with a positive attitude, check this out. It definitely put a new perspective on my complaints. Suddenly I realized how trivial they really are.

Have a great weekend. Don't forget to go over to Mrs. 4444's and check out the rest of the crazy quilts.

Here's to Friday Fragments.