Who Are All These People?

A short story

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Who Are All These People?

“Do you ever think about all these people? Who they are, what they’re like?”

Laura looked at me a little funny, and then scanned the crowd casually. “I’m pretty sure they’re all baseball fans.”

“Good call,” I smiled.

The Reds were up, one out, men on first and third. That’s when baseball gets interesting. The batter clouted a hard grounder to third, and the crowd erupted in cheers. But the third baseman made a great play on the ball and whipped it to second for the out. And the second basemen easily threw to first for the third out and the inning was over. The crowd’s cheers turned to groans.

After the excitement had died for a moment, gazing at the crowd, I observed, “That’s what I’m getting at. We all got excited at once, and we were all disappointed at once. It’s like we’re one organism with one mind. Who are all these people?”

Laura punched my arm lightly. “Organism? I’m the biology teacher. You can’t use my terms,” she joked. “Stick with historical terms. Like ‘mass movement’, or the like.”

I went along. “OK. How about a ‘united front’”

“That will have to do.”

I pondered for a moment. “But really. Don’t you ever wonder to yourself about how so many people can be so closely allied, even for a moment, and then go their separate ways and be completely different? Who knows? Later this evening, some of these folks might get into a fight with each other... No doubt, some live within the same community, but have entirely opposite views about the schools, or some such. They’ll argue like hell at a school board meeting, but they’ll scream in unison over a batted ball.”

Laura turned toward me with a wry smile. “I don’t know if I should be impressed with your depth, or concerned for your mental health.”

I laughed. “My mental health is fine. It must be. With three therapists working on me, how could it not be?...Just kidding.”

“Kidding about which? The three therapists, or that they could cure you.”

“Both. I don’t have any therapists, and I can’t be cured.”

Laura smiled a little as she gazed at the crowd. I had her wondering. “How big is the world?” she asked absently. “Is it only as big as the people we know? Or is it big beyond comprehension?” She scanned the stands for a moment. “You’re right. Who are all these people?”

We both silently observed. It was a pleasant day. Whatever issues we face, there’s nothing we can do about them at a ball game. It kind of frees up the mind for abstract thoughts. “I was thinking about that double play. The third baseman made a beautiful move. But he’s their guy, not our guy. So, we groan instead of cheering. Somewhere in these stands, people were cheering him.”

“Traitors!”

I was liking Laura more and more. She could go along with me, even if just for fun. Maybe that’s just what I need. The fun. I know I take things a little too seriously, sometimes. I get too inside myself, lose perspective.

It was little more than chance that brought Laura and me together for this game. Someone had given her a pair of tickets, and she knew I liked to go to the games now and then. We both teach at the same suburban school, but don’t see each other that much. I don’t know how she felt, but I always felt that she just wasn’t my type, whatever that is. If there’s supposed to be a spark between a man and a woman in order to get them together, there wasn’t one. But now that we had spent some time together, I realized this was the most fun I’d had in a long time.

We continued to banter throughout the game. Maybe that’s what I like about a baseball game. There’s time to think of other things, but not enough time to get lost in it. I wondered. In a crowd of forty thousand people, I felt that we were unique. We weren’t, I know, but it felt that way. Who are all these people?

Do people make the place, or does the place make the people? Points of view seem to come, not from a person’s mind, but from their environment. I think about the kind of person I am, the kind of person other people are, where they’re from and how they got to where and who they are. There’s cities, there’s rural areas, and there’s that neutral zone in between, the suburbs. I live in that in-between. On the edge, I guess; the edge of the city. Or the edge of rural, depending on how you want to look at it.

Sometimes I feel like I’m on the edge of everything, close in, but not all in. Not a participant, just an interested observer.

What am I a part of? Am I part of anything? The suburbs. It’s a homogeneous blend of various races, who mostly think alike. We pretend to be diverse, but we go to the same churches, the same schools, express the same values, talk the same politics. Experience the same things. I find that unsettling. Do I want to be part of this, all in on conformity? Are we diverse? Or are we a monolithic group of like-minded, unthinking reactionaries?

After the game, I guess that’s when the diversity happens. Some fans go to a bar; different fans, different bars, different restaurants. Some just go home. To their individual suburbs, or elsewhere in the city. And some go beyond the suburbs, to some farm town.

Maybe I think too much. But that’s what I thought about while I sat in the stands with Laura, observing those around me.

When the game was over (we won!), it was only reasonable that I invite Laura to dinner, at a restaurant of her choice. She had driven us to the game, picked me up at my apartment since she lived farther out, and I was on her way.

She liked the idea of going to dinner, but had no favorite place.

“I don’t know, you decide,” she said.

I’m not that familiar with downtown, and the restaurants were swamped after the game anyway. “Ever been to Buddy’s? It’s in the next town over from our school. Good home cooking”

“No, I haven’t. But if it works for you, it works for me.”

“I eat there fairly often. Good food. Good people.”

I gave her directions as she drove. I don’t know if the game itself made some difference, but while the conversation driving into the game was about school, the conversation now was more about our personal lives.

I’d always known that she lived out a ways, in a farm town. Turns out, she lives on a farm. I’ve never lived on a farm. Never even visited one, except the pretend ones, the ones with lambs for kids to pet.

“Yes, I’ve lived there my entire life. Never anywhere else. It was my Mom’s parents’ house, where she grew up; and her grandparents’ before that. I keep thinking I should move out, experience someplace else, but I really don’t want to.”

Me, I’ve lived a number of different places, seen a fair amount. Still, I sometimes wonder if I haven’t experienced exactly the same things, but in different places. “You never feel isolated? Living in a small, isolated town? Like you’re missing out?”

She smiled, and turned her head a little toward me, even as she remained focused on the road. “Sometimes I feel like it’s other people who are missing out. Where am I going to find someplace else that’s better than what I’ve got?”

“You can’t know, unless you go look,” I challenged her good naturedly.

“Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I’ve never been off the farm. In college, we took a trip to Europe, saw the usual sites. It was a great experience. I’ve been a few places, but I never wanted to live anywhere but home.”

We rode quietly for a while. I told her the next turn to take. All those people in the stands. All with one common interest, cheering for ‘their’ team. Whose team was it, really? Who is ‘We’?

Laura took the turn that I pointed out, and we were at Buddy’s. The place is one of a kind, certainly not a franchise, yet it seems to have unidentifiable commonality with other places I’ve been. It’s a little the worse for wear, but it wears well. I opened the door for Laura. It stuck a little, as usual. Just a little extra push…

Laura smiled as her eyes scanned the interior. It was clean, but well used. There were wear patterns in the floor, and old pictures on the wall that no one had looked at in years. Yet those pictures helped tell the story of the place, just in their being there. Its age was inviting, unlike antiseptic modern franchises.

“I like it here,” she said. “Feels warm and friendly.”

“It is… One of the servers calls me ‘Honey’. She knows me by sight, not by name. I should introduce myself.”

“You should.”

We sat ourselves at a booth along the wall, halfway towards the back. We sat opposite each other. She half leaned against the wall, pulling her opposite leg up into a comfortable position. There was something in that, something that told me she was comfortable no matter where she was.

I was facing toward the back wall; I couldn’t see the main activity of the little place.

“Well, hello, Honey”, said the server. I hadn’t seen her coming, but I could anticipate her as I watched Laura’s eyes follow her approach.

“I see you brought a friend,” the server said to me.

“Yes. She left it to me to decide where to eat, and Buddy’s was the first place I thought of.”

“Well, I should think so,” she said, turning and smiling at Laura… “Can I get you all something to drink to start?” She turned back to me. “Decaf as usual?”

“You bet,” I said.

The server again turned to Laura. “How about you, Sweetheart?”

“Tea for me.”

She left to get our drinks.

“She knows you well enough to know you drink decaf, and you don’t know each other’s names?” It was said with good natured accusation.

“Do we need to? We seem to function OK without such intimacies.”

Laura shook her head with a smile. “Maybe so. Maybe the name isn’t the important part. But what the hell?”

I was sorting through my mind, looking for the appropriate response, when the server returned with our drinks.

“Here you go. Are you ready to order?”

We ordered. Laura wanted mashed potatoes instead of French fries.

“No problem,” said the server.

“By the way,” said Laura, “My name is Laura. What’s yours?”

“Sarah,” she said, a little flattered to be asked.

“Carl, here, has been saying that names aren’t that important. I disagree.”

“Carl?...Well, it’s good to meet you, Carl,” Sarah said facetiously. She offered me her hand, and I took it.

There seemed to be some woman thing between Laura and Sarah. Sarah turned back to Laura. “You straighten him out for me, OK?”

“I’ll do my best.”

Sarah left us to ourselves. It was a strange camaraderie that Laura and I were experiencing. She looked across the table at me almost like a big sister. “Was that so hard?”

“And is the world that much of a better place for knowing each other’s names?” I asked defensively.

“Don’t worry so much about the world. Concern yourself with your part of it. I know nearly everyone in our town by name. And they know me. Granted, it’s not a lot of people. But it’s my world. I belong in it, and they belong in me.”

That smile. Warm. Knowing. Confident. Demure, even. We sipped our drinks.

“What’s in a name?” I speculated, along with Shakespeare.

Laura looked back at me, saying nothing. She was reading me like I’ve never been read before. I could keep no secrets from her, even if I said nothing. Somehow, I was comfortable in that.

“You should come visit our little town,” she said.

“I’d like that,” I said.

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