The game is over. We won. Another win for the #5 ranked black team, trouncing the orange team, 7-0. I’m standing on the brick wall that serves as a second set of bleechers, heels kicked off and feet sunning on the warm concrete, watching the boys practice batting, ever aware of the menacing foul ball.

If you’ve ever been to a little league game, you’ll know that these kids hit the balls all over the place. Last week a kid hit a foul ball that *almost* killed a woman riding her bike and the week before that, a foul ball hit a passing car, and another damn near put a hole thorugh the roof of the coach’s truck. These balls are dangerous. So,when someone yells, “LOOK OUT!” i am, of course, overwhelmed with fear, my life flashes before my eyes, and i duck for cover, knowing this is the part where my head gets bashed in by a baseball and I die, leaving behind my most prized possession, my iPad.

This now means i have to watch the game or practice close enough to know where the balls are at.all.times (these kids aren’t getting my iPad!). This isn’t fun as it cuts into my suburban mom socializing where we talk about exciting things like the location of the best TJ Maxx or the boys’ latest rash, but its better than those 3 seconds of terror i experience when i hear “LOOK OUT!” and don’t know where the damn ball is.

I step down off the wall, barefoot into the grass, and turn to watch the field. In front of me sits another mom, texting feverishly on her cell phone. So enthralling was this text messaged conversation, that she failed to watch a boy at bat hit several foul balls into traffic, and even failed to look up at the shrill screams of “LOOK OUT!!” as a slow moving foul ball made a wide arch over the foul ball fence, and came down towards the top of her head.

As in movies, things tend to slow down when your life is in peril. I watched the ball glance off the top side of the bat, and saw it rotate backward, slowing down to the point where i could read “Made in the U.S.A.” I was able to predict its trajectory, and was able to shout “LOOK OUT!” 4 times before i heard the solid *thud* of the baseball as it hit the top left quadrant of her head. It seemed so slow that you could see the rotation stop the second it made contact, and actually sit on her head a second to say hello before it rolled away.

Silence.

Are you okay? Someone who wasn’t me asked, even though i was the closest person to her. “I’m fine,” she said, as she got up to start walking it off. I said to myself, You just got hit in the head with a baseball. Honestly, this isnt the time to man up and act like it didnt hurt because i SAW the ball hit you in the head. Hell, the ball even said it hurt.

Ball: It hurt like a mug.

At that moment i looked up at one of the dads, who just so happened to be walking from another direction and saw the whole thing. But instead of rushing to her side, and saying, “ OMG, are you okay?” he let out the loudest guffaw i have ever heard at someone else’s expense. He laughed so hard IN HER FACE that she finally acknowledged that she was hurt so that she could avoid this man’s mockery, and was escorted to the snack shack for an ice pack, his hoots of laughter following her all the way there. At some point he stopped laughing. Until she returned with a bag of ice on her head, and then he started laughing all over again. I mean full-on belly laugh.

To be honest, seeing her get hit in the head with that baseball was a little funny. Like honestly, if she were on Tosh.0, she’d need a web redemption. It was BAD. But i knew it would be in poor taste to laugh at someone’s potentially serious injury so i didn’t.

However, no one said i couldn’t laugh at the dad who won’t stop laughing at someone else’s potentially serious injury… Which looks like i was laughing at the injury but i wasnt!

I swear!

So practice ends. That dad never apologizes, and the bump on her head was gone by the next week’s game…At which she pulled out her phone, and started to text away…then stopped and went to her car.

Lesson learned…