The Comisky Wound

I haven’t been to the South Side to see a Chicago White Sox baseball game in a long time. When I was a kid the White Sox didn’t play at U.S. Cellular. The South Siders play Comisky Field. Same place, different name.

As a North-Sider and a Chicago Cubs fan, the White Sox, didn’t matter to me. Too far away. We just didn’t go down to the South Side to watch the Sox. The South Side was not only out of bounds, too far, but could have been too “dangerous.” After all, white flight flew north, not south in Chicago, to the northern suburbs. I lived in the most Jewish of them all, Skokie.

A little shuttle train to the city enabled my brothers, friends and me to take the Howard Street L, an elevated train, directly to Addison Street, a North Side stop. We got off at Addison and there was Wrigley Field, tall and proud, home of the Chicago Cubs. Five bucks and we’re in the gate.

It was that or stay at home and watch the game in black and white on WGN, Channel 9. I could quote batting averages of greats like Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, and Ron Santo back in the sixties, and sure, collected baseball cards.

Almost twenty years ago, married with children, I determine it’s time to reward Bobby, one of my four boys, for something or another, probably for reaching 20 points on the ever-present behavior modification "point system" on the refrigerator.

So I buy some tickets to the White Sox/Blue Jays game, not so much for the Sox, but for the Jays. I don't know why, but Bobbie loved the Blue Jays, not the Cubs, not the Sox, neither Chicago team. He probably liked the bird.

We leave Bobby's twin brother Ricky to baby sit our youngest, Sammy, who is about 4 at the time. I think my instructions to Ricky went like this:

1) pick up Sammy at camp
2) take him the park to play
3) take him home
4) eat the dinner that I left you
5) don't burn down the house.

These were the usual instructions.

We take off for the game in the car (you can take the train, but it’s a long ride from where we live in the city), but I’m worried. Ricky is only 11 and Sammy is my baby. It wasn't that I didn't trust Ricky to baby sit a four-year old. It was just that as a working woman I'd had a literal army of babysitters. My experience leaving the kids with kids hadn't been the greatest. They tended to leave me with no vodka at all.

And Ricky was still a kid. But I had told myself and my spouse, FD, that this would be okay. I could deal with a baseball game. Bobby deserved it. Ricky could handle Sammy. We'd be home before too long. The neighbors knew to check in, and FD wasn’t in China, he worked only five miles away.

So the two of us are off to Comisky Field and we get there in one piece, park and find our seats. I’m unimpressed and already regret going to the game. The Sox are not my team. I simply don’t care about baseball, not really, not anymore. I have no interest in drinking beer, like most people, to assuage the boredom. There are no big TV screens, no electronic banners, no bells and whistles. And Bobby doesn’t seem so Tom Terrifically interested.

These are not cell phone days, by the way. Nothing to play with. I wait until Ricky and Sammy should have been home from camp and the park, maybe it’s the third inning, and leave Bobby to find a pay phone to call home. The public phone, since we’re so high in the bleachers, is near our seats.

The phone rings, rings, rings.

It rings and rings.. They aren't home.

Or they were home and have been slaughtered by the home invader. (I have a repeating home invader dream about once a year, never know when it’s coming on, am convinced now, that this is why).

Being a rational-cognitive therapist (among my many beings) I know I must counter these thoughts if I am to survive my anxiety. But I can’t convince myself that the possibility of home invasion is remote. Maybe there was a home-invader. Without proof, who knows?

I call a neighbor and she checks the house, returns to the her telephone to say, "They're not answering. It doesn't look like anyone's home."

"Did you see any home invaders perhaps?"

"Uh, no."

I return to my seat and say to Bobby, “They're not home."

"Oh, I'm sure they're probably over at the Levitt's."

The Levitts! They live near the park! I call the Levitts. No, they aren't there.
I call home. No answer. The phone rings and rings and rings.

Forget countering negative thoughts. The boys have been kid-napped, obviously. I have the worst panic attack in years, have forgotten what a panic attack is like it has been so many years, but even now I can feel this one in my chest remembering it.

My thinking on this, just so you should know, is that if you don't have true panic disorder, but you do suffer occasional panic attacks, with a little searching you can remember them all. I remember them all. I ask myself is these are like the snapshot memories that some prostitutes have, the ones I’ve treated who say they remember every trick.

This panic attack is terrible. My heart is pounding, I can’t breathe. I’m weak in the knees and feel like I’ll pass out. I’m was sick with anxiety, and try to protect Bobby from catching it. Knowing that it’s just anxiety doesn’t help, either.

I jockey between the pay phone and reporting back to Bobby, trying desperately not to panic him. He notices that I’m upset and he is upset, which upsets me more. .

At some point I say, "We're going home."

No argument there. But before we go, obsessively I say, “Let's make one last call for the road.”

Ricky picks up the receiver. These are land phones we’re talking about.

"Where in the world have you been? Are you okay? Is Sammy okay?"

"Huh, yeah. We're okay. We're eating."

"Why didn't you answer the phone? How long have you been home? I was sick with worry about you guys! Where were you?!?"

"We were over at Gershon's house, the Russian kid. We were playing video games in his basement. We lost track of the time."

"Oh. You're sure you're okay?"

"We're fine."

"Why didn't you go home?"

"I thought we'd just stay for a couple of minutes, play a few games and go. I lost track of the time. Sorry."

Never mind that he broke the rule on video games. We didn’t do video games, even then, no Nintendo especially. Not in our house, shunned television, even, and our kids admitted, years later as young adults, that their grades were better, probably because of that. Outside the house, we surrendered.

Never mind that Gershon wasn't on the list of things to do.

They were safe.

"We can stay if you want," I tell Bobby. "We can finish out the game."
But the game is ruined; he wants to go home.

All in all? Not a good memory. Not a feel-good night for the fam, and I stayed away from Comiskey Field, now US Cellular, for many, many years, too traumatized to go back. And anyway, if I’m going to watch two teams play baseball. One of them is going to be the Cubs.

therapydoc

Critical events, risk, and the Chicago White Sox

Critical events are happenings that instantaneously wrest our psychological development from the doldrums, jolt us into growth and differentiation, or potentially retard it, slow us down.

When critical things happen we know we have to talk to someone, a mental health professional, or that eventually we’ll have to work it out. Like we flunk out of school. Or we hear someone has died. The sheer jolt is confusing and the brain just can't do it alone. A critical event can be traumatic, the stuff of posttraumatic stress, recurring memories, intrusive thoughts, and nightmares.

But it doesn’t have to be. A critical event can be benign, too.

You might remember the letter that says you got into college, or the one with your ACT or SAT scores, having a baby, getting your first raise. The jolt applies to finding a new best friend, running the 50 yard dash in under 6 seconds, smoking your first joint, drinking your first drink (alcoholics can tell you the date, time and place), getting your first pet.

All the firsts. . .

First funeral, first car wreck, first prom, first day in prison, first apartment, first day away from home, first bunk at summer camp, first boyfriend, girlfriend, first time having sex, first marriage, first guitar, first time on Letterman.

Psychologists call them snapshot memories. I think of an enormous pop of the light bulb those professionals photographers used before digital became so powerful.

Maybe not all firsts are critical events, and certainly most people don't go to therapy for firsts. They do shape us, however, and serve to divide up our memories, block out the timelines of our lives.

I think of my mother blocking out a sweater, deliberately shaping the heavy wool. Not everyone takes things to the dry cleaners. Some people use Woolight and coax a heavy sweater into shape on a thick towel so that the shoulders don't look funny like they would on a hangar. No, there's no real connection, sorry.

So firsts are good, and they're part of the reason therapy docs are always encouraging us to take small risks, to live a little, push ourselves to do things that are probably good for us, even though we’re scared out of our trees.

New experience is expansive. Action builds self and confidence.

THE STORY

I personally can't stand crowds. The thought of going to Comisky Field, (it's hard to remember that now it's U.S. Cellular ) to see the Chicago White Sox terrifies me. And it's easy to avoid. You just don’t go, save a lot of money.

Last summer FD asked me to please come with him to a Sox game. I hadn't been to one in about fifteen years, had a bad experience that time.

But he begged. Please, honey. I have great tickets. It's our anniversary. Barry and Alex are going (his brother and our nephew, St. Louisans, Cardinals fans). When do you even get to see them? What're you going to do, stay home and watch TV? (Well, yeah).

So I caved.

We approached U. S. Cellular and the traffic got congested. We weren't exactly sure where to get off the expressway . Being late, being lost, this particular anxiety doesn't really throw me, I like exploring. Of course the parking lot was full and the officious-looking traffic people pointed us to a line of cars that edged forward six inches every half hour, going nowhere.

FD somehow made the perfect right hand turn to get us back to State Street where there was parking at the Illinois Institute for Technology. I love architecture so I this was a good thing for me, getting a bird's eye view of a new neighborhood, a new college campus. All my life I assiduously avoided the South Side, being a Cubs fan, and all. The Chicago Cubs are a North Side ball club.

Boy, there were a lot of smiley people going to the Sox game, mostly young, confident people familiar with this world. Or so it seemed to me. Only I was out of my element. But okay, I was cool.

We got inside Cellular and because we had these great seats (thanks to a friend with season tickets-- thanks Stewie) we didn't have to push our way through any crowds. Barry and Alex were already there and my son, I was told, had already stopped by. He vends.

This is the real reason I went to the game, is the truth. I wanted to see him in action before he left home for the year in September. Lemon freeze. Get your lemon freeze.
I took a picture of him and put it up in our front hallway. He’s in his vending jersey. It was a real snapshot memory, with a real snapshot.

Being at the game was unbelievable. They pumped me full of beer (one beer is full of beer, okay, it was 16 ounces). The Sox must have scored 14 runs, and each time, a dream come true for a child at heart, they do fireworks at Cellular!

And the visuals! They have these enormous television monitors broadcasting the game, and moving electronic banners that light up the lower and upper decks. The crowd is insane, their exhilaration palpable. Who doesn't love exhilaration?

And the Sox beat the Cardinals! The Cards are mortal enemies of the North Siders, arch enemies. They always cream our Cubs. But FD and Barry, and Alex, all from St. Louis, are routing for the Cards, and although I don’t like the White Sox, particularly, although hold nothing against them, they beat the Cardinals and that’s good enough for me.

I didn't even have to stay for nine innings because my guys couldn't stand watching their team get whooped. They had had quite enough by the 8th inning. Oh, and yes, I was ready to get out of there by then. Quite enough exhilaration for one night.

The next day I could tell everyone who would appreciate it that I'd been to a Sox game! Those who got it nodded appreciatively.

Honestly don't think I'll ever forget it and am a much bigger person now. I have more to talk about, can join into a conversation about baseball, and I can almost relate to the sport enthusiast thing. Well, not really, but almost