Littlefield: What I Did On My Summer Vacation

This week on Only A Game -- we’re telling stories on a theme. You might call it “What I did on my summer vacation,” if that wasn’t the fallback position of every first-year teacher in every sixth grade classroom in the country.

Ah, what the heck? Let’s go with it anyway.

The summer I was 10 or so I went to camp in Maine.
It was a warm and sunny camp ... and rarely did it rain.
And at the baseball tryout I pulled out my catcher’s mitt,
And that was when the coach said, “Son, perhaps you’d better sit.”
It seems they had a catcher. They were happy with his play.
So I worked on my hitting. Maybe that was how I’d stay.
I hit while others went to crafts, or practiced volleyball.
I hit while they were swimming, or were in the dining hall.
And when they shot their .22s or fooled around a bit,
I went back to the diamond, because that was where I hit.
The story has a happy ending, strange as that may seem.
The coach did notice all my work and said, "You’re on the team."