Forgive me, for I ate a plum, and it wasn’t that delicious. Some people have all the luck. I have already failed at Daily Content Challenge, but I am going to back-date this and carry on with a stiff upper lip. You are so polite that you will pretend not to notice. I’m the president; you’re FOX News!

Yesterday my horoscope warned “If you take a risk (with your life) you could end up in the hospital; this is especially true toward the evening.” Normally I scoff at death, but I was supposed to attend a minor league baseball game that evening. Oh! Would I be killed by a t-shirt cannon? Trampled by the Canaligator? It was AARP hat night, and I inspected the cap for hidden poisoned needles or molecules of bird flu or old age (di-uh-beet-us). The Spinners team logo is a bat spooled with yarn, to celebrate the rich textile mill heritage of Lowell, but this particular personalized hat was stitched in China, thanks to some inscrutable combo of Cisco routers and slave labor. I don’t know. I don’t know anything.

The boring conclusion is that I did not die at all, not even during the brief thunderstorm that passed overhead. It took me until the third inning to realize the game had started, because that’s how gripping the play is. I ate one jumbo grilled dog, with ketchup (catsup) and mustard. Was it really a dog? We can’t be picky. I also had a Red Hook ESB in a plastic cup. This heightened my enjoyment of Dizzy Bat. Later I had bites of ice cream and funnel cake. Holy fuck. I thought the funnel cake might be the instrument of my death, but I guess the obesity virus takes a long time to make its stranglehold known.

Then I used the power of my mind to hurt a particularly annoying child. This effort took until the sixth inning. He was jumping up and down, and when he attempted to plop back into his seat, the seat had conveniently folded into a closed position. So he fell on his ample little rump. My companions laughed at his misfortune. Don’t tell me it was coincidence. Nothing is a coincidence.