Better Offer

I grew up in a small town in rural North Carolina.  These were pre-internet days, and small-town life was not very exciting.  But my grandparents lived just south of Chicago.  And every so often when they would come see us, or even on the phone, my grandfather would say, next time you come up to see us, we'll go see the White Sox play.  Well we could hardly be described as a sports-oriented family, but hey, a Major League Baseball game was high excitement for my brother and me.  We must have been six and seven at the time.  Something like that anyway.

Soon enough we did visit them.  And so it came to pass that my grandfather secured four tickets to see a White Sox game.  Nose-bleed tickets, but who cared?  It was my grandfather, my father, his son-in-law, and my brother and myself.  Now my father would rather have had a colonoscopy than sit through a baseball game.  But much to his chagrin, when we got to Chicago, he learned that my grandfather had purchased four tickets rather than three.  So politeness demanded that he had to go too.

We drove into the city from their little town, found parking, and headed towards the stadium.  And almost at the gates, some fellow, a complete stranger, comes up to us and says, "Hey, I have an extra box seat ticket that I cannot use.  Do you want it?"  Very kind of course.  But he had one box seat ticket.  And again, there were four of us.

Now let's stop right here and ask:  What would be the response of any normal person?

But if my family was normal, we would not be here, reader or writer.  So my grandfather, without so much as a look in our direction, says, "Man-oh-man, that's great, thanks so much!"  Then after the fellow trotted off, he turns to my father to rather disingenuously discuss how they would use this unexpected windfall.

So, my father and brother and I went off to watch the ball game, together, in the cheap seats.  And my grandfather went off in another direction, to watch the game from the best seats in the house, with strangers.

To this day, it is the only MLB game that I have ever attended.
𓐵