Work was fine, and I had emailed my people at Coors Field to arrange tickets for the game against Washington
I really did not feel like going to the game once I had relaxed after work, but knew that would change once I got there. Eric picked me up at about 6:00 and since he parked about 10 blocks up the street, we had time to chug a beer or two before we reached the “$6.25 Beer Zone”.
I had two extra tickets, so rather than let them go to waste we decided to find people in line to try to save them some cash. I never sit in these seats anyhow; I have a good friend who is the usher in the section behind my old camera and he seats me in some of the vacant box seats behind the dugout whenever I go.
I thought it would be nice to hook up a father/ son with these Row- 5 tickets as a nice surprise… if Eric couldn’t find his‘hot 30- year olds’! We had gotten there late, so there were very few people to fit the bill. The last thing I wanted was to hand these out to some drunken fool, or some backward- hat wearing Frat Monkey, in case we HAD to sit there for whatever reason.
We were about to give up when I looked across the street and saw a guy from suburbia trying to buy scalped tickets across Blake St 
This was my opportunity to piss them off just a small fraction of what they had annoyed me. I bounded across Blake St
Remember The Greenpeace Affair?
Ron?
Yeah….
This was much worse however. I have no recollection of exactly HOW I got in this guy’s face, yelling, screaming, and completing a full time- warp back to Hillsdale and my Redneck Youth. However, there I was… none to nose with this idiot telling him to “back the f**k up”, “Stand down motherfu**er”, and “step the f**k back”. Lots of ‘f**ks’; NONE with upward inflection.
I could see the mental evaluation process in his eyes. Should he lip back, or let this one go? First, it was amusement because, apparently, he thought I was kidding. Then there was “oops, I messed up”. I believe he saw A LOT of rage in my eyes, because then I could see much fear in his. I had him. Todd was an Honorary Redneck again.
When I saw his fear and realized how close I actually was to fighting this guy, I regained control of myself. I literally have very little connective- memory of this exchange, until I heard his fellow scalpers, who wanted no part of me themselves, egging him on. They used the time- honored trick of questioning his manhood. He was a “pu**y” if he didn’t… get his ass kicked! PURE Hillsdale! Then his posturing changed.
All of the sudden he appeared to WANT to fight again, and told everyone so, as he was running away from me! Sprinting. Can you picture the comedy of a grown man talking trash WHILE he is running away from you? My blood was still boiling rapidly, so I began to pursue him. My agitated reptilian mind was telling me that this would be a WONDERFUL way to release some pent up frustration, but common sense got the better of this inner- debate. Either he did not want anything to do with me, and this was how he could save his “Scalper Cred”, OR maybe there was a weapon stashed wherever he was running. Whatever. Both scenarios told Todd to turn around and go to his ballgame. Therefore, he did.
The suburbanite/ gentry- type man had a look of shock on his face when I walked back across the street and asked him if he still wanted the tickets! Unfortunately, so did his kid. He was probably eight or nine, and I had completely forgotten he was there during all of this. Eric not-so- gently reminded me by informing me that “Well, you FREAKED that KID out dude.” I felt like an ass. In all honesty, the kid (and dad back at the office) now has a hell of a story to tell his friends later, but still…
The adrenaline rush was astounding, and familiar. I was literally shaking like a leaf in anger as we walked toward the gate, and Peruva-punk followed, still running his mouth… on the other side of the street. I blew a kiss at him as I obnoxiously waved my tickets high overhead. He reminded me of the dog behind a fence who WANTED to do SOMETHING, but just couldn’t quite climb it.
I said hi to a couple of friends I had worked with, more or less just to calm myself down. That helped a bit, but now the realization had set in that I was REALLY in a precarious mental state. Telling a Greenpeace Puppet to fuck off is one thing, and some might even say admirable. THIS however was something else. Dangerous. Foolish. Immature? All of the above?
I said hi to a couple of friends I had worked with, more or less just to calm myself down. That helped a bit, but now the realization had set in that I was REALLY in a precarious mental state. Telling a Greenpeace Puppet to fuck off is one thing, and some might even say admirable. THIS however was something else. Dangerous. Foolish. Immature? All of the above?
Eric had yet to see that side of me, and I expected him to either laugh, smack me in the head, or never speak to me again. He knew about the other things that had happened however, and had some remarkable insights to offer: the same insights as Chris. I had no tolerance for any unnecessary hassles associated with being ‘plugged back in’. I’d been literally in survival mode for over a month, and apparently I liked it. I literally felt like I was short- circuiting when I tried to re- adapt to contrived priorities. I felt caged. As Veronika had put it in California
As we sat there and watched the game, it began to dawn on me that I really needed to move on. It had been three weeks since I’d ridden in to Denver 
We finished watching the Rockies beat the Nationals, and then walked adjacent to the train tracks back toward the truck. The parking lot spans 12 city blocks, so we had ample time to survey the yard, and chat. A funny thing happened during that long walk, and something that is not so surprising. My energy level skyrocketed, my mental awareness sharpened, and I felt… oddly… at home. Everything I had been missing since I had returned from the road. Smokers will get the metaphor that this was to my brain like the first cigarette after going 2- days without. That was telling in the sense that it seemed apparent all of the sudden that I was seeing a mental manifestation of what Chris and Eric had been telling me: get the hell out of here!
On the way back to The Friary, I decided that I really needed a drink. Eric had decided not to work Wednesday, so I called Chris and we arranged, against my better judgment, to head to Barracudas. I just needed to chat about this stuff and did not want to be in the house caged for the night.
Remarkably, the night was rather uneventful, but productive. We discussed alternative ideas about the temper- flares, and even talked about the possibility that tonight’s example may have been The Road’s way of tapping into something a bit more primal than I am used to thinking about: a return from the Laws of Man back to the Law of Nature. The Anarchists in the audience will LOVE that! When I thought of it in that light, it didn’t seem so bad.
Much of the debate leading up to this trip had a lot to do with talk v. action, and killing duplicity by living YOUR ideals, as opposed to those imposed upon you. I will post a lot of that when I get more time, but these three weeks has seemed to bear that fruit.
Another series of discussion went along these lines in that the common theme with these outbursts have centered on manipulation. I was not yelling solely at the Greenpeace Puppet; I was yelling at the puppet master as well. The scalper had gotten to the brink of violence because he had gotten physically in my space by reaching in front of me, and was trying to protect his ‘Manipulation Zone’ as I saw it. There may be a tad bit of rationalization in there, but as is usually the case, there are probably elements of truth in all of this. Either way, it was becoming clear that it was time to move on.
Wednesday was a chill day. Not much of anything outside of walking to Office Depot to get business- card paper for the next leg of the trip. While there, I decided to buy Chris a stick of RAM for his laptop as a ‘thanks’ for letting me stay here. That took an extra trip, but it was worth it. His computer really needed the added memory! I spent the rest of the night writing, and dwelling some more on the previous night.
