Fragility of Life

Tonight we met some friends after work/school for a Winston-Salem Dash baseball game. Riley was excited and had been talking about it all week. There is nothing he loves more than going to a baseball game. Baseball glove in tow, we made our way to the game. We arrived early enough to watch the pre-game warm-ups (ah, so much different than the law school days when we'd stroll in 45 minutes late, head directly to the beer garden and watch very little, if any, of the game). Then we made our way to our seats, which, for this game, were in one of the sky boxes courtesy of our friend's company. The nice thing about the sky boxes are that there is plenty of room for the kids to run around and play when they need a break from sitting still to watch the game. The box we were in was pretty much behind home plate, so the view is great. It is also nice to be behind home plate because there are nets in place to catch foul balls... or so we thought. The next sequence of events starts out innocently enough. The guys left the box to go grab some food and drinks leaving the girls behind with the kids. It was around the 7th inning, so Riley was at a point in the game where he needed to be moving around. Riley and I were playing "baseball" in the box, which was nothing more than hitting a rolled up paper towel with a hat. I heard it first, the big CRRRAAAACCCCK of a ball hitting a baseball bat. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw it next. The ball was most definitely heading in our direction, and at an extremely high speed - basically a line drive foul ball. I saw the ball heading right towards Riley, but he was too far away from me for me to do anything about it. I had enough time to feel real fear, but not enough time to react. Fortunately, the ball missed his head by no more than six inches. Probably less. It hit the seat next time him with a loud thud and then bounced off of the seat in the direction of my stomach (with baby inside), still traveling at a pretty high speed. After taking a few more bounces and rolling around for a few seconds, the ball came to a rest right by my feet. By this time Riley was right next to me and was THRILLED that he "caught" a baseball (after all, isn't that why he'd brought his glove to the game). The guys returned to find Riley soooooo excited about his baseball, the other little boy crying because he didn't have one, and me sipping (ok, halfway chugging) a glass of wine to calm my racing heart. So the story ends up OK. No one was hit by the ball, no one was hurt. But it does make you ponder the fragility of life. I am fairly confident that had the ball hit Riley, it would have seriously harmed if not killed him. And that does happen sometimes at sporting events. One second you're just sitting enjoying a Thursday night at the ballpark with your family. The next second life is forever changed. Lucky for us, it is just a good story of how Riley got his first foul ball. But you better believe that I replay that moment in my head time after time and count my lucky stars for fate or whatever it is that made that ball curve those live-saving six inches to the right.