Day 44

A picture of someone I'm told I look like:

coincidentally, I do a pretty good impersonation.

It was the summer before sophomore year.  My father came out to NY with me - I didn't need his help moving into the dorm, it was just a nice excuse for a father-son trip.  I had this sweet leather jacket at the time.

My mother's college roommate (VC '74 - they're all nuts) was a BFD at NBC at the time, and she scored us field-section seats to a Mets game while we were in the city.  Dad and I enjoy the game for several innings before the woman two seats to Dad's left leans over and asks - in that nasally Queens snarl that so endears New Yorkers to Angelenos - "Ah yew Chris Rahck?"

I say no - she's not entirely convinced.  I confess that I've heard it before; she claims it was my sweet leather jacket.  I don't give her the "No ma'am, we don't all look alike" spiel; while I don't see the resemblance, I'm told it's there too often to put down to that trope.

Some time later, a woman in the section two to my right gets cracked in the head with a foul ball.  Terrifying, I gotta tell you.  The EMTs are called out.  One of them stands idly in the aisle next to our row - I have the aisle seat.  I'm wondering whether an EMT should really be doing anything idly when he asks - in a voice that conjures to mind Mike Seaver with his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels, whistling Dixie and desperately trying to conjur a halo over his head - "Good game, huh?"

I have no clue what this is about, but I'll play along, because I want to know: "How's the woman who got hit?"

"Oh, she'll be fine, just a bruise."  I'm busy not buying that during the excruciating pause that follows, when:

"Can I have your autograph?"

I sputter.  I'm ashamed that my gift of gab, my talent for the retort, has completely failed me in this comedic crisis moment.  This is the improv theater of life, people, and I failed.  My dad had to answer for me, as it was clear from my agog expression that no English would issue forth for several more seconds.  "I don't think he is who you think he is," Dad says.  "Oh," says the dejected - and dubious - worst EMT ever; he shuffles away, perhaps to actually provide emergency medical care.

The fact that Dad said "I don't think..." leads me to believe that he somehow figures an EMT might want my autograph (d'aww...).  And my friends, with the gift of humorous hindsight, later reprove me: that's exactly what I should have given him.