Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

For as long as I’ve been a conscious baseball fan, it has only been about two teams. It wasn't until I moved from Massachusetts to New Jersey that I realized what it meant to be a Red Sox fan. In New England, your allegiance is automatic. There are no choices, unless you live in Connecticut, in which case I have nothing more to say to you. It was the height of the late 90s powerhouse Yankees. The not-even-fair Yankees. And it was obnoxious. Knobloxious. I silently hated them, until I met Henry. Like most people you’ve known for more than 10 years, it is hard to remember the first time you met. I often have moments where individuals crystallize in my mind, moments when I can remember them clearly becoming realized. Henry came into relief with The Red Sox. We were in the same group of friends through middle school and early high school but it was the fall of senior year when things changed. 2004.
I don’t remember how we started it, but somehow we began passing one of my actual red socks back and forth during the end of the regular season, when it became possible that things might happen. My house was across the street from our school and when I would pass Henry’s car parked outside I would hook the red sock to his antennae where it would wave all day in the cool autumn breeze. And the Sox won. I hooked the sock, we stayed alive. It became a ritual. We wouldn’t talk about the games at school, fearing a disturbance in the force (that crazy thing that keeps you wearing the same shirt/sitting in the same spot/eating the same food every night because you think you can somehow shift the outcome of a game). It got tense. But we kept passing the sock. It was getting soggy and faded. And without talking about it, we kept playing. Henry and I would silently pass each other in the hall, wordlessly hoping beyond hope… I can’t even remember the actual game, I just remember staying up late into the night, watching endless post-game commentary, and for some reason the ending credits of the broadcast, which is always so weird after a ballgame. I had a pair of red Converse high tops that year and I remember carefully drawing a Sox “B” on the toe of the left shoe…I wanted to remember that these were the shoes I wore when the Red Sox won the World Series.
So naturally, when it came time for the annual Shakespeare Recitation Competition, Henry and I did the opening scene of Romeo and Juliet as brawling Sox and Yankee fans, instead of Montagues and Capulets. When it came time to switch families, we would trade hats, throwing them across the stage practically mid-sentence. In a school full of Yankee fans, we brought the house down.

Emma Impink appreciates explaining baseball to East Africans, catchers' thighs and the Trenton Thunder.