Quiz #101. "I'd Give My Right Arm to be Tom Seaver."
Why did I dream I was a pitcher for the Phillies and what does it say about 2021? Steve's Stay-at-Home Coronavirus Quiz for January 5, 2021.
Awake too early on Tuesday, January 5, 2021. 4:21 AM. I woke up to realize that I’d had the strangest dream. I had reported to the Phillies stadium (unclear which one), dressed in uniform as an up-and-coming pitcher who’d just been called up to the major leagues. I was not that pitcher, but I was impersonating him. Wearing his uniform, I showed up at the stadium and talked my way inside. My dream-self was younger and I was able to get into the locker room after convincing a staffer that I was, in fact, the pitcher. I was warmly greeted by some of my new teammates, but it was then that I was spotted by a news anchor and reporter from the TV station where I once worked in Philadelphia. In turn, they quietly approached me, aware that I was not, in fact, the up-and-coming pitcher. Thankfully, they did not expose me, but it was only then that it dawned on me that others might see through my plan to pretend to be the new pitcher for the Phillies. The next thing I remember, the news anchor walked away to hit golf balls at what was no longer the Phillies stadium. It was a public park with a golf course where I used to play golf in grammar school. At this point, I woke up. One of my first thoughts in that state between dream and reality was how foolish I’d been in thinking that people who knew me as me would somehow overlook the fact that I was now pitching for the Phillies, pretending to be someone else. Of course, that’s not the only thing in the dream that doesn’t add up, but that’s the nature of dreams, a non-linear patchwork of dimly remembered images, anxieties and emotions.
What does this dream mean?
I have no idea, but when I did wake up, the first thing I noticed was a Phillies sweatshirt that Will had given me for Christmas. It was hanging near the bed, the name and number on the back (Hoskins, 17) visible and facing my head on the pillow in the bed. Had this been the last thing I’d seen before going to sleep? I don’t remember. On Christmas morning, when I opened the present, Will was surprised to see the name and number on the back of the sweatshirt. When Will had picked it out and showed it to Sara on the computer before ordering, neither realized that it was a particular player’s sweatshirt. They just liked the design, a zip-up-the-front hoodie in my unusual size, XXL-Tall. Sara was especially concerned on Christmas morning when she saw the name and number because she did not recognize them and worried that they were from a player I did not like--or worse, one who’d been traded from the team. In reality, as in dreams, it’s interesting to wonder why grown men and women wear the named and numbered uniforms of famous athletes, but none of that bothered me. Hoskins is not my favorite player, but I am not worried that people will get the wrong impression of me from my wearing “his” sweatshirt. I just like the fit and style of the sweatshirt.
For Christmas, Ted and Erica gave us an Aura frame. It’s a digital picture frame with a twist. We can load any pictures we want into the frame, but so can designated others. Aura has an app and if we give people access to our frame, they can upload images that will then show up on the frame in our living room. It’s really rather amazing. On Christmas, I wanted to see how the Aura worked so I quickly loaded it with the last two months of pictures I’d taken from my iPhone. Ted and Erica also have shared photo albums for our grandchildren Turner and Marin which they use to share images of the girls with members of the family. Aura has a feature where you can load a shared album into your picture frame and whenever a new picture is added to the shared album on your iPhone, it’s automatically loaded into the Aura frame. I also added these shared albums to the Aura and plugged it in.
It’s remarkable that somehow a small piece of customized cloud content that I’d grabbed from other pieces of the cloud that were somehow connected to me was now on display in our living room. Like a dream, however, on Christmas, watching the Aura display this mad jumble of images was unsettling and distracting. The photos would change every 15 seconds and I’d set it up at eye-level on the radiator in our living room. As a new image would appear, Sara and I would wonder about the picture. I use my iPhone to chronicle odd things in pandemic life so the last two months of images included a picture of romanesco, a weird vegetable we’d gotten from a local farm and a photo I’d taken of myself at the urgent care before being tested for Covid.
Imagine seeing these images on a digital picture frame on Christmas?
From the shared photos, we also saw an image of the girls at a family party in Michigan. We’d try to figure out who was seen in the image, but then it would disappear. I’ve since curated the images on the Aura, but it remains an amazing device when you think about what it’s doing.
The Aura, set up on our radiator next to the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, a ceramic Santa dish set and our basket for holidays cards and newsletters.
Our children, and especially Ted and Erica, have tried to lead Sara and I into adopting new technology for years. More than 10 years ago, the children gave us a GPS. We didn’t get it. Who needs a GPS when you have MapQuest? When they first gave us a Keurig coffee maker, we also didn’t get it. Why would anyone want to make an individual cup of coffee? Now, of course, we use the Keurig every day, only occasionally brewing a pot of coffee.
At the start of the pandemic, we bought reusable, colored coffee pods. While I walk the dogs at night, Sara washes the dishes which includes the day’s coffee pods. She leaves them in a drying rack overnight and when I wake up in the morning, I load them into the pod holder next to the Keurig, by color of course.
This week, the NFL is about to begin its playoffs. Three years ago, I played in a playoff football pool run by the friend of a friend. The person running the pool used a Google Form to gather people’s picks in the playoffs games which were then collated and displayed in a Google Sheet. This was the first time I’d seen a Google Form in action and when Will came home from college for Spring Break that year, he gave me a tutorial on building Google Forms. As my friends and family will attest, I was hooked and now use Google Forms for everything from gathering family information to the comments and ratings for this quiz. And yes, in 2021, I am using this Google Form for a football pool that I am running. You’re welcome to join the pool if you’d like. The object: pick the Super Bowl winner and loser before the playoffs begin.
14 NFL teams make it to the playoffs, 7 from each conference. That means there are 98 possible Super Bowl outcomes. Your mission--should you decide to accept it--is to pick the outcome of the Super Bowl BEFORE the playoffs begin.
As noted in Quiz #95. “This is about as 2020 as it gets,” I am also trying to help a retired college professor gather holiday newsletters for a book she’s writing on holiday newsletters written during the pandemic. Dr. Ann Burnett has studied holiday newsletters for years, trying to understand and explain what they say about us and the times in which we live. She’s especially interested in holiday newsletters written during the pandemic. With each author’s permission, I’ve sent Burnett some of the newsletters we received in 2020. She’s sent me a form that’s an anonymous survey asking people to comment on their holiday newsletters in 2020. Did they send them--did they not? Did they get more newsletters this year and what were those newsletters like? If you’re interested in being part of her project, here’s the form.
Like my dream this morning, I know this quiz is really a mad jumble. Though my quizzes often ramble from topic to topic, I try to write them with a central theme. Sometimes, that theme is obvious--other times not so much. Like a lot of us, I think I am having a hard time just understanding what the hell is going on in the world. New year, new confusion. We think we have things figured out--and yet, we don’t. Elected officials will gather this week and some of them will argue that the election which elected them into office should be disregarded. Politics and the merits of their case aside, how does the logic of that make sense? We turn a corner and think we’ve rounded the bend only to see more confusion and uncertainty ahead. Yes, there’s a vaccine, but we’re multiple millions behind in getting them to people. The new mutant strain of the virus is spreading in dangerous new ways in some countries--and now our own--confounding those who thought they understood the virus. For people who’ve been very vigilant already, it’s unsettling to hear we need to be even more careful with this new mutant strain.
When I was applying to college back in 1974, I remember that as a 17-year-old pondering his future in an adult world, I came up with a phrase that I used in college essays to describe the dashed hopes of my own lifelong dream, “I’d give my right arm to be Tom Seaver.” I loved baseball and wanted to be a baseball player, but I was uncoordinated and a horrible athlete. (Seaver, of course, was right-handed. He was a star pitcher for the New York Mets who died in 2020, another loss from the year gone by. )
Above, me at Shea Stadium in 1965. As noted in Quiz #57. 1 in 12,766, I grew up on Long Island as a die-hard Mets fan.
As strange at it seems now, when I wrote my college essay, I was a Mets fan. Another story of hopes and dreams that change over a lifetime in ways we can never imagine.
For now, it seems, many of our hopes and dreams are mired in an uncertain mess. 2020’s supposed to be over, right? I just want to wake up and find out it’s really over.
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What did NOT happen?
A. Saturday night, Sara and I watched “Mank” on Netflix. We now want to re-watch “Citizen Kane;”
B. Sunday morning, former colleague Ryan emailed me and another former overnight colleague of ours a screengrab of a picture from a special section from the Sunday New York Times, “Notes From the Newsroom: Overnight Emails Tell the Story of 2020.” It’s a great read on the events of 2020. It’s also an homage to overnight news workers;
C. Sara and I get a paper copy of the NYT, but this special section was unreadable as our newspaper that morning was thrown into a puddle and, despite multiple plastic bags, this section was waterlogged;
D. On Monday, January 4th, Sara opened a package from Amazon which I had ordered for her without telling her. Inside was a t-shirt which read, “Underestimate Me: That Will Be Fun;”
E. College friend Bill was the first person to sign up for my playoff football pool. He’s working in Rome and signed up before others, getting my overnight Sunday/Monday email announcing the pool during what was the middle of his Monday morning.
Want the answer?
Answer #101. “I’d Give My Right Arm to be Tom Seaver.”
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Want more?
Here’s the next quiz in the series: Quiz #102. January.
Here’s the previous quiz in the series: Quiz #100. “… one.”
Here’s the first quiz in the series: Quiz #1. Stella and Social Distancing, March 13, 2020
Here is an archive of all the quizzes.
The quiz is explained here: Steve’s Stay-at-Home Coronavirus Quiz.
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