Member-only story
Psychic Baseball
Reaching out to a young boy
It was near the end of the one year I lived in Los Angeles when I ran into an old friend from Texas at the grocery store. We were on opposite sides of a large table display of mangoes when we looked up and saw each other.
“What the hell are you doing in California?”
We both said that at the same time. I walked around the mango table and greeted her. We stood there talking and catching up for close to half an hour.
Her name was Jennifer. (She was adamant about never being called Jenny; it had to be Jennifer.) She was a single mom on the verge of turning 40. She had a 12 year old boy named Jason and a 10 year old girl named Julie (they were a ‘J’ family). I met her back in Texas because she was the sister of a friend of mine. She was always there at my friend’s parties so I got to know her a little bit.
What I liked about her was her laugh. It could be heard a block away. And she laughed with her entire body. She practically convulsed when she laughed. I always tried to make her laugh so that I could witness the spectacle.
It turned out that she had just moved to Los Angeles a couple of months earlier to take a much better paying job. It was her first time living outside of Texas. She had not yet made any real friends and it was nice for her to…
