Are These Seats Taken?

 Are These Seats Taken?

Preface. With few exceptions,  I am normally compatible with old people. The exceptions are when it is old people day at the grocery store, where they cease being old and start being evil, pillaging and running into and over innocent folks in order to get to the Entenmanns pastries.  

Tonight we went to the Macon Bacon game. Shugaluvs and I have had season tickets since it’s inaugural season. We love it. It’s great baseball played in the greatest little ball yard you ever saw. Anyone that’s been around me for 5 minutes knows my love for the hallowed ground of Luther Williams Field. 

Anyhow, Shugaluvs picked out our seats and we get the same ones each year. They’re not really our seats but they’re our seats, you know?

We arrived, and did what we normally do- go through the food line, get our food and drink and head to section 205, Row B, seats 14 and 15. OUR SEATS. 

As it happened, our seats, which really aren’t ours but which are subletted to us for 10 games each season, were OCCUPIED. 

I thought about Goldilocks and the three bears- somebody’s been sitting in my subletted not really ours but our seats and their asses are still here! 

Well it wasn’t exactly Goldilocks, and there weren’t three bears. However, there were 3 blue haired little old ladies, and they were homesteading in three seats, two of which are the aforementioned subletted seats that aren’t really ours, but ours. 

Shugaluvs and I stop dead in our tracks. 

I looked at her, she looked at me. We both looked at our subletted seats that contained little old ladies asses and not ours. 

Instinctively knowing that a situation of this magnitude could have an undesirable outcome, I did what I normally do in times like this—I hid behind Shugaluvs while she addressed the blue haired little old ladies. 

Shugaluvs was informed by the trio that one of them was unable to ascend the steps to the assigned seat, and accordingly all three decided to sit in these three seats. 

Im sure there’s a written rule somewhere (maybe the Holy Bible in Deuteronomy) that says you don’t sit in an unassigned seat. 

It’s aThou shalt not. 

This isn’t general admission and It’s certainly not musical chairs. Assigned seating is by design, it’s calculated and necessary for a better America. These ladies were clearly not playing by the rules. 

Shugaluvs informed them that although two of those three seats normally had our butt cheeks in them, that we would sit elsewhere. The ladies said we could use their aforementioned seats located near the top of the stairs, so we went there. 

Those two seats were in the middle of the row, and both flanked by an entire row full of people that we had to navigate through to sit. 

We did the best we could. I was just able to balance my hamburger on my very narrow left thigh while applying the ketchup and mustard packet, holding my water bottle with the right hand. It was a balancing act known previously to the Wallendas. 

We were both sweating. In our assigned seats, we are near one of the new BAFs (Big Ass Fans), and when I looked down and saw the backs of the blue haired ladies heads, you could see there blue hair being moved by Big Ass Fan air. 

It was frustrating not being able to exhale without bumping the person sitting next to us. Truth be told they didn’t want us up there any more than we wanted to be up there. 

We had become refugees. Castaways. 

Moreover, we were sitting in the middle of a church group that included the youth that had just done a great job of singing God Bless America. My frustration at times results in my expansive use of adjectives, none of which would be well received in the current seating arrangement. I breathed thru my eyelids, and like a prisoner in Alcatraz, began my exit strategy. I looked at the blue heads. I looked at Shugaluvs. 

Desperation. 

Well, Sue and I weren’t about to try and have the little blue haired

Ladies evicted from the seats. We love old people, even the ones who don’t follow the rules. Ratting on them to authorities would equate to abuse while simultaneously punching our ticket to hell. While the ascension to the top of the stairs wasn’t exactly Everest, it would be wrong to out the blue haired trio. 

We gathered our gear and descended the steps to the main breezeway  in search of other seats. 

Our friends Shane and Kim Steiner were also at the game. They motioned for us to come sit with them, which worked out perfectly. I was humming God Bless America as we took our new unassigned seats, and I could almost feel my butt cheeks smile. 

Epilogue. 

The Macon Bacon won 15-2. It was a blowout. It also poured down rain to end the game. As we left, seats 14 and 15 of section 205 row B were vacated. 

I hope the blue haired ladies stayed dry and had a good seat for the ride home.