For the past month, my Aunt Betsy has been hiking the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route that runs across northern Spain from the French border to the Atlantic Ocean. Since the ninth century, pilgrims (and more recently, avid hikers) have been walking "The Camino" to pay their respects to Saint James, test their physical fitness or find meaning in their lives.
Fortunately for me, I don't require a month-long pilgrimage to have a life-changing epiphany. All it took was a Red Sox game.
When my mom called me on Saturday afternoon and said that she'd scored some tickets through work and wanted to take my sister and me, I was pretty thrilled. Like anyone who has ever been to a game at Fenway, I figured that I'd be sitting in a cramped bleacher seat next to Sully from Southie, who would take up half of my seat, put away somewhere in the vicinity of a dozen $7 beers, and drip mustard all over my Curt Schilling jersey.
So imagine my surprise when I got to the ballpark and discovered that we'd be watching the Sox from the comfort of a luxury box.
It was as if I'd stumbled into a heaven of sorts - one with its own bathroom, couches and lounge area, a porch with a great view of the game right along the third base line, and most importantly, a kitchen complete with a buffet and a beer fridge. The buffet was everything that baseball food is supposed to be: hot dogs, pizza, clam chowder, even an ice cream sundae cart that served the ice cream in a miniature Sox batting helmet.
Believe me, I took full advantage of my night of luxury. I consumed mass quantities of pizza. I dunked my chicken strips in chowdah. I even frightened the woman who manned the sundae cart when I asked for every topping she had.
But even while I was slurping the last drops of caramel syrup out of my mini-helmet, I could have returned to my ordinary social status in the bleachers. Like Leonardo DiCaprio in "Titanic," I thought it an interesting novelty to dine with the first class, but I was more than ready to return to "a real party" back in steerage.
Then Rondell White hit a foul ball into our box, almost decapitating my mother and finally finding the glove of one of the kids sitting with us. (On a side note, I wish it was still socially acceptable for me to bring a glove to Sox games.) Then and there, I made the decision that I would be fabulously wealthy very soon. Soon enough that I would never have to attend a Sox game in anything less than my very own luxury box.
I had more than just a life plan: I had a column idea. I had planned to tell you about my future as the head of a Fortune 500 company, or the inventor of a flying car, or a world-famous actor.
But then I went outside the ballpark and joined the masses streaming down Yawkey Way after the game, yelling "Yankees suck!" and listened to some guy play the bagpipes, and had the epiphany I'd been waiting for.
I may never sit in a luxury box again. I may never be able to dunk free chicken in free chowder again. But here it is: The beauty of Fenway is that out on the street, the guys in the luxury boxes and the guys in the bleachers can all demean the Yankees together.
Maybe sitting next to Sully isn't so bad.
