Dreams of October

I slept. I slept through four innings, slept because I was tired from anxiety and strange dreams and a stressful day at work, but mostly I slept because I didn't have the adrenaline to stay awake for a West Coast game after Milton's not-so-poetic performance in the first two innings. I had the laptop on the bed, though, game still playing, and I'm sure I was following it subconsciously, because I woke up when Ross was at the plate in the seventh, score tied, that magic feeling swirling in the air. You know the one - you can feel something is about to happen. Your heart quickens, quivers, blood races through your veins all tingly like you imagine fairy dust to feel. You recognize yourself holding your breath, or you start shaking your leg or fiddling with some object in your hands, or you are sitting at the edge of your seat, little baseballs fluttering in your stomach.

I flipped over, woke up completely, watched a tiny Ross on a tiny screen hit a monstrous home run to take the lead, to take a giant leap towards first place, towards October and baseballs sailing through the autumn skies, towards fans in red sweaters and sweatshirts and jackets hungry for something they've been denied for so long. I wondered, did the guy in charge of concessions at GABP make a mental note to order some hot chocolate for those pumpkin cool evenings?

I didn't sleep after that, watched the whole game and laid awake after it, with the words "first place" occassionally floating through my conscious mind. I took pleasure in thoughts of the Deadbirds floundering, flipping and flopping like fish on an infield. And you know? After laying there for probably another hour, drifting to dreams when the day had already spent two of its hours, I didn't suffer noctural stories about revolutionaries or wars or people chasing me. Instead, my unconscious imagination sat me down in a cafe, where I was talking baseball with a friend, raving about how the Reds were in first place, having won 5 of their last 6 games while their birdbrain foes have won only 2 of their last 6. And I woke up, groggy but happy, with first place as the first thought of the day, and I crawled out of bed instead of laying there an extra ten minutes, and I was the first one in the office instead of being late, and I checked the standings just to make sure it wasn't only a dream.