How My High School Reunion Prevented Me From Going Blind

Earlier this season, I knew I would be traveling back home on this July 4th weekend to attend my 20th high school reunion.  So even though the Cubs were going to be battling with Dusty Baker and the Cincinnati Reds in a series that was sure to be pivotal in the NL Central standings, I started on a quest to sell my seats back in April.

Luckily, the folks who sit behind me were trying to gobble up seats for this weekend, so I was able to unload them and get face value since that is kind of the unspoken rule within the section, we can sell our tickets at a profit, but we don't profit off of other Aisle 424 residents.  I was happy to just be rid of them and not have to worry going forward and they were happy to not have to pay an exhorbitant amount above face as the time grew closer and the series meant more.  It turns out that I totally ripped them off.

Face value to watch the kind of baseball that was played over the majority of the weekend against the Reds is highway robbery.  I feel like people who happened to sell their Enron stock right before they got caught cooking the books, or sold their house right before the housing bubble burst.  There was nothing skillful or prescient about what I did, I just got lucky to have happend to have graduated from high school twenty years ago.

So instead of watching the Cubs this weekend, I got to hang out with old friends like Jeff and Todd:

I hadn't seen them in practically the twenty years since we graduated and it better not be that long in between our next visit because one of us will most likely be dead and the other two will be reduced to talking about the health of our colons.  Todd is the guy on the right who I last saw when he got a foul ball from Shawon Dunston (his favorite player) while attending his first (and only) game at Wrigley.  Not that I'm bitter about it. 

Jeff, on the left, is a Pirates fan, so he has been having a tremendous amount of fun when they play the Cubs, and not so much when they play anyone else.  It didn't even bother me much when he pointed out that the Pirates have been kicking the crap out of the Cubs because he's lost quite a bit of hair.  I don't know who the fat, old guy in the middle is, but it looks like he is having a good time.

Meanwhile, friend of Aisle 424, Tim Souers from Cubby-blue.com provided this illustration of what the people sitting at the ballpark (or watching a broadcast) were likely doing this weekend while watching the Cubs:

Lord knows that's what I would have been doing had I been there.

So thanks, fellow Aisle 424 fans for buying those tickets and thanks to JHS Class of 1990 for giving me such a great excuse to not have to suffer severe eye trauma.  Can we have another reunion next weekend?