Afternoon At Sandra's CH 6 of Becoming Thuperman

In the absence of Dad, why was taking out the trash my job? Other than sometimes the trash can was heavy, it made no sense. Brenda and Linda were bigger and stronger than me, yet never once in all the times Dad was away on business had either of them done the job. They were using lame excuses. The menial task was far beneath them. Why, they complained about helping Mom clean the house.

It had nothing to do with being a girl, because Sandra took the trash out at her house. Once before when the subject came up I asked her why her brother, Spike, didn't do it? She revealed that he was conveniently never at home when it was time to do it, but she didn't mind doing it. The trash can was on wheels and she got an extra dollar a week in her allowance for doing it.

Maybe if I got extra allowance for doing what was usually Dad's job, I would feel different, but if my allowance was increased, I know I'd just spend it. Four more turns at a video game was all an extra dollar meant to me. It wasn't like I knew how to save money.

In the course of the present conversation about such things, Sandra revealed that she saved nearly all of her allowance, usually four dollars of the six she received weekly, anyway. Since last Christmas she'd squirreled away over two hundred dollars which she kept in a secret hiding place so Spike couldn't find it. It amazed me that she had that much money saved because, as I mentioned earlier, I usually spent all of my weekly five dollars between Friday evening and sunset on Sunday.

After I took out the trash, we hung around at my house for another half hour, then Sandra and I headed down to her place. The first thing we did there was empty all the trash cans in her house and wheel the can out to the curb, parking it in the usual place beside the mailbox. While there the letter carrier pulled up and, recognizing Sandra handed her the family mail.

When we returned inside we went directly to the kitchen, where Sandra delivered the mail to her Mom and made good on the promise of a cold soda in return for my helping her collect the trash. Her mom asked, "Did you two enjoy your trip to Chicago?"

"It was okay," Sandra said. "Something to do. We played games along the way. It's not like we stopped or went into the airport or anything."

"Are you hungry?" she asked as Sandra handed me a can of Coke.

"Maybe a little bit."

"You didn't stop anywhere to eat?"

"We had hotdogs on the way back," Sandra clarified. "They were really good, too." But as that was now a few hours ago, of course, we were both hungry.

"There's some Jell-o""

"I saw it." She was already fetching some bowls from the cupboard.

"I don't want you two eating too much. It'll spoil your appetite for dinner. Will can stay for dinner, of course. I need to return his mother's favor for taking care of you."

I shrugged. It wouldn't be the first time I'd eaten there and hopefully not the last.

"We're having spaghetti," Betty said more directly to me, knowing how much I enjoyed her pasta dishes - all the more reason to stay. One of my favorite things, so it worked out perfectly. Betty's sauce was always homemade and really good. I liked Mom's sauce, too - whenever she made spaghetti - but hers was store bought, so it always tasted the same. Betty's was an old family recipe, and as her mother was Italian, that made it extra special. She always seemed to know how to cook anything with noodles and sauces to perfection. In fact, she always seemed to be cooking something anytime I was there. Now that school was out for the summer, she had a lot more time at home during the day.

After enjoying the mid-afternoon snack, the next thing Sandra and I did was go into her father's study to make a copy of the map/maze Sandra made at my house. As we went upstairs to her bedroom she handed one copy. For the first time I took a good look at it.

Although it was going to be a challenge to memorize it because of the maze, I was ready to do it. What was involved with all the turns and twists seemed kind of crazy in a way. "So we have to go the wrong way down this street to go over to the next street and then take that to the end to turn left instead of right""

"That's the fun part. Nobody will be able to follow us and know where we are going."

"Was anybody doing that before - following us?"

"I don't know, but if they were, they'll be confused now."

"You know what you didn't put on here?"

"What?" she asked.

"The park. It would be around here, right?" I pointed.

"That's the dot right there," she said as she indicated. "I just didn't name it because I couldn't decide whether to call it the park, the baseball field, or the swimming pool. And it would have been messy having all those things scrunched together when it's really all the same place."

"True. But you should call it something. I mean, we have been there many times, and we both like it there. So, according it your rules, it should be named."

"Well, everybody else calls it the park."

"But we're not everybody else," I pointed out.

"That's kind of why I didn't want to call it that," Sandra said with a smile. "I'll call it Tree Land."

"There are some trees there, but I think it's mainly grass, so maybe we should call it Grass Land."

"Just because a place has a lot of something isn't why it's named what it is. Some things have nothing to do with what a place is like. If that was true, Greenland should be Snowland."

"Or Iceland - oh...that one's already taken, isn't it?"

"Yes, and that also proves my point. I've seen pictures of Iceland and it isn't all ice at all. Maybe in the winter it is, but it's mostly green in the summer."

"We'll call it Tree Land, then," I agreed. "At least until we think of something better to call it."

"So, speaking of Tree Land, when do you start little league practice?"

"I haven't decided to do that. I'd rather spend time playing, especially on weekends."

"Baseball is sort of like playing, isn't it."

"Well it is, but it's not as fun as I thought it would be when I decided to play last year. I guess going to practice every night was what I least liked about it."

"But you got to play and usually your team won."

"If you can call playing right field for two innings a game, playing. I could sit on the grass out there and watch the game without affecting its outcome. No one hits anything that way unless they're left handed - like me."

"You got a lot of hits when you were batting, though."

"I got hit with pitches and walked a lot, because the pitchers weren't used to a southpaw batter - which is what they called me."

"What's it southpaw?"

"I'm not sure. It's something funny to say. No one calls right-handed people 'northpaws', do they?"

"I've never heard it."

"I went to every game," Sandra reminded me. "You hit the ball many times."

"I grounded out to first base a couple of times. Once I got on first because the pitcher was really bad about covering first base when the first baseman had to field the ball. And a few times I hit balls out to right field which the opposing players dropped. So, whenever I got on base it was mostly because I was left-handed - which was scored as an error not a hit."

"The times balls were hit your way you always caught them."

"Yeah." It was true. "But the few times it happened, it was like the other players and the coach were surprised or acted like it a fluke or something."

"If you don't like playing--"

"But I do like playing, just I want to be a pitcher, not an outfielder."

"Then tell the coach to make you a pitcher."

"It doesn't work that way, Sandra. I wanted to pitch last year but Coach Everett wouldn't even let me try out. He just stuck me in right field, like he assumed I didn't know how to play."

"Now he knows you do, right?"

"I guess so."

"Then he'll let you play somewhere else."

"No, he won't. Bobby Shaw is the best pitcher in town. And Tony, his brother, is second best. Everybody knows that. So nobody else tried out. And when I asked if I could, everyone laughed like they thought I was joking."

"So you just didn't say anything else, did you?"

"Let's say I allowed a lot of assuming."

Sandra shook her head. "This year you're going to try out for pitcher," she decided.

"I haven't been planning on playing. So, I'm all rusty from not throwing the ball around. I'll never make it. Bobby and Tony play baseball all the time."

"We can go in the backyard play catch if you want." Sandra was actually a pretty good ball player, but she never tried out for the team. Betty said it wasn't lady-like for her to be playing with a bunch of boys. I wasn't sure how it was lady-like for her to hang out with me all the time, but I guess it was okay, somehow. As I didn't want to call attention to it and risk her telling me I couldn't play with Sandra anymore, I never pointed it out.

As Sandra didn't officially have a glove of her own she used Spike's. She used it more than her brother ever did, which was seldom ever and only when she and I played catch. "You want to do that?" she asked.

"I guess. But I have to run down to the house and get my glove and ball."

"You could pretend to be a little more enthusiastic," she coaxed.

"I'll be right back," I offered.

"That's better. I'll be in the backyard waiting for you to get back."

While I ran down to my house to get my things, I was thinking about whether I really wanted to try out for baseball again. It was like giving up a large chunk of the summer for the sake of belonging to a team of other guys who I didn't like all that much. Sandra would talk me into doing it whether I wanted to or not, though, so I might as well just do it and not argue about it. Arguing isn't something I like anyway, especially with Sandra. She usually makes some sense and so she wins the discussion. That was one of her superpowers, almost always being right enough to win arguments.

One of the funny things about how superhero powers work is that everyone has them but, like I said before, some people wait a long time about discovering them - many people never discover them at all. That was one of the sad parts about discovering the gifts I was born with - knowing other people had them too but never realized it. You see part of my special powers were that I was left-handed.

Since most people are right-handed and I didn't like being seen as weird, I also learned to do everything right-handed. Dad said that made me ambidextrous. But I learned later on that I was born that way. I preferred using my left hand but I could do everything with either hand. Actually, when I wrote with a pencil or pen, it was more legible if I used my right hand. And people didn't laughed at me curling my left hand around in the awkward way of making letters or how everything slanted backwards like it was going to fall over.

Being ambidextrous was even more unusual than being left handed. So, of course, I didn't let on about it to anyone. It was bad enough that when I showed up for little league try outs a year before, I had a left handed baseball glove. I had to play baseball left handed because I was better at throwing a baseball that way. My left arm was a little stronger. But I had figured out how to swing a bat from either side and I was pretty good at hitting the ball either way.