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Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
October 3, 2005
Published as Family History
in a Gramma Letter dated October 3, 1995.
© 1995 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
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Untitled, 2005
© 2005 by Bud Grossmann
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A MAN WITH A MESSY VAN
Tuesday, October 3, 1995
Dear Gramma,
This is my advice: do not read this letter while you are eating.
My daughter Elizabeth, eight years old today, is a zest-filled member of the Blue Dolphins, a girls’ soccer team. In games on Saturday mornings, the girls gallop and giggle all up and down a weedy, dusty field. They play hard but worry little about the score.
Though the games are brief (quarters run only eight minutes each), the brutal morning sunshine wearies the players, officials, and spectators. Because the Blue Dolphins’ practice sessions take place in the cool of the day, in the hour before supper on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I enjoy attending practices more than cheering at games.
Last Thursday, Eliz and her teammates were practicing passes while the setting sun sent shadows dancing across the field in a city park big enough to accommodate a dozen teams at once. I sat in a beach chair at the edge of the field, up against a boxy, hollow-tile park building that houses several meeting rooms and a pair of restrooms. In a notebook on my lap I was drafting a letter to you, my grandmother.
A breeze fluttered the page I was writing on. Nearby, other soccer parents sat or stood about, reading novels or chatting quietly. I became aware of a child crying. It was a sound of sorrow, not of physical injury, and this miserable weeping and groaning, I determined, was coming from the men’s restroom behind me. Listening for some clue, for someone speaking, I heard only solitary sobbing. When I turned towards a soccer mom and wrinkled my brow to ask a silent question, she frowned with puzzlement. I closed my notebook and set off to investigate.
The restroom, vulnerable to vandals, is pretty basic. It has sinks, urinals, and two doorless toilet stalls but no lights except daylight, no mirrors, no paper towels, and, often, no toilet paper. In the farthest toilet stall, on the pot, sat a boy about the age of my Elizabeth. Tears streaked the dust of his face. With the lower part of his oversized T-shirt bunched at his waist, the boy clutched an obviously troubled stomach. He wore shinguards, and cleated shoes that did not reach the floor. Above the shinguards, pushed down as far as he could get them, were his shorts and undershorts. The boy had pooped his pants, and I mean he really pooped his pants!
I greeted him. “Hey, pal, how you doin’!”
“Will you get my mom?” he asked mournfully. “She’s teaching soccer.”
“You bet I’ll find your mom,” I promised. “Are you feeling better than you were?”
He was okay, he said. When I asked, he told me his name—Andrew—and he told me where to look for his mother. “Her name is Naomi,” he added helpfully, “and she’s wearing a hat.”
I walked outside and asked another Blue Dolphins dad to keep Andrew company, and I sent a Blue Dolphins mom to look for a coach named Naomi, wearing a hat. I believe in delegating duties whenever possible.
I went to my van, on the street fronting the park, and found a raggedy towel, a well-worn T-shirt, and one of my old swimsuits with a drawstring at the waist. (I never know when the ocean might beckon me when I’m out on the road.) I dumped tools out of several gallon-size Ziploc bags, took a stack of McDonald’s napkins from my glove compartment, and returned to the restroom just as Naomi was arriving. She was hatless but identifiable by her worried visage.
When we went inside and she saw and smelled the mess, Naomi sighed, “Oh, Andrew!”
Placing my hand on her back, I gently said, “Let’s get this guy cleaned up—I think we have everything we need.”
We did, and we did.
That’s today’s news, Granny. Bye for now.
Love,
Buddy
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