In the hospital

Anyone who has ever had a loved one in the hospital will enjoy this:

A woman called a local hospital. "Hello. Could you connect me to the person who gives information about patients. I'd like to find out if a patient is getting better, doing as expected, or getting worse."

The voice on the other end said, "What is the patient's name and room number?"

"Sarah Finkel, room 302."

I'll connect you with the nursing station."

"3rd floor Nursing Station. How can I help You?"

"I'd like to know the condition of Sarah Finkel in room 302."

"Just a moment. Let me look at her records. Mrs. Finkel is doing very well.
In fact, she's had two full meals, her blood pressure is fine, to be taken off the heart monitor in a couple of hours and, if she continues this improvement, Dr. Cohen is going to send her home Tuesday at noon."

The woman said, "What a relief! Oh, that's fantastic .. that's wonderful news!"

The nurse said, "From your enthusiasm, I take it you are a close family member or a very close friend!"

"Neither! I'm Sarah Finkel in 302! Nobody here tells me a thing."

Alex

About Indian cricket team

Q: What did the spectator miss when he went to the toilet?
A: The entire Indian Innings.

Q: Where do Indian batsmen perform there best?
A: In Advertisements.

Q: When would Agarkar have 100 runs against his name?
A: When he is bowling.

Q: What is the most proficient form of footwork displayed by Indian batsmen?
A: The walk back to the pavilion.

Q: How to increase the chances of Indian batsmen playing out the entire 50 overs?
A: Try giving them two innings to begin with, then try three and so on.

Q: What is the Indian version of a hat-trick?
A: 3 runs in 3 balls

Q: What is the height of optimism ?
A: Sehwag coming out to bat applying sunscreen on his face.


Phone Call for Sehwag:
Indian Team Manager : "Hello"(over Phone)
Wife :"Can I talk to Sehwag, this is his wife."
Indian Team Manager:"Sorry,he is just going to bat"
Wife:"No Problem Manager, I will Hold on"

Alina

Gene Sharp

Gene Sharp is perhaps the most influential proponent of nonviolent action alive. His work has served as a how-to manual for activists in a swath of countries across Eastern Europe and Asia. For instance, his From Dictatorship to Democracy and The Politics of Nonviolent Action helped inspire the Serbian student movement that toppled Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

"Nonviolent action is possible, and is capable of wielding great power even against ruthless rulers and military regimes, because it attacks the most vulnerable characteristic, of .all hierarchical institutions and governments: dependence on the governed," writes Sharp.

Sharp drafted From Dictatorship to Democracy ax the invitation of a Burmese activist. He was smuggled into Burma to assist in courses on nonviolent struggle for those resisting the military regime. He was in Tiananmen Square shortly before the tanks started rolling in. He has traveled to Israel and Palestine a number of times to disseminate his ideas. He was also invited into Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, this time by the governments themselves. He consulted with ministers on the nature and requirements of the campaign that they were using to peacefully secede from the Soviet Union. The three governments also used as a guide his book Civilian-Based Defense. The three countries became sovereign with almost no loss of life.

His work has been translated into twenty-seven languages, ranging from Nepali and Chinese to Spanish and Arabic.

From Dictatorship to Democracy, Sharp's most widely used tract, is a booklet that summarizes his ideas. The Politics of Nonviolent Action is a three-volume primer in which he lays out 198 specific methods, such as skywriting and holding mock funerals. He is also the author of Gandhi as a Political Strategist (with an introduction by Coretta Scott King), Social Power and Political Freedom (with an introduction by former Senator Mark Hatfield) and, most recently, Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential, an analysis of several historical cases of nonviolent protest. Another book of his, The Power and Practice of Nonviolent Struggle, has been published in Tibetan, with a foreword by the Dalai Lama.

Sharp has practiced what he preaches. As a young man, he was sentenced to two years in prison for civil disobedience during the Korean War. He was paroled after nine months.

He then worked for a short while with pacifist A. J. Muste. Sharp, who holds a doctorate in political theory from Oxford University, was a researcher for nearly thirty years at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs, and was also affiliated with the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

In 1983, he founded the Albert Einstein Institution to help propagate his work. Due to financial difficulties, the organization now operates out of two rooms in Sharp's three-story brick home in an East Boston residential neighborhood.

I interviewed Sharp on a late October morning. I was greeted by Jamila Raqib, the institution's executive director. Sharp, dressed completely in black, received me inside. The two rooms were filled with newspapers, boxes, and books, the first room with works on Nazism and communism, and the second with books on Gandhi and Sharps own writing. One of the rooms had a frayed portrait of Gandhi that was given to Sharp by an Indian graduate student more than fifty years ago. The other room had a banner gifted to Sharp by the Serbian Otpor student movement.
Q: What sparked your initial interest in the field of nonviolence?

Gene Sharp: The world was quite a mess. The Second World War had just recently finished. Atomic weapons were new. The U.S. was starting to build a hydrogen bomb. There was racial segregation in the United States, including discrimination in Columbus, Ohio [Sharp's hometown]. European colonialism was still alive. I was always trying to figure out how this alternative mode could be applied in the real world. How much more could we do?

I discovered actions of nonviolence dating from a long time back; Gandhi did not invent nonviolence.
Q: You mentioned racial segregation. Were you actively involved in the civil rights movement?

Sharp: A little. Somewhere around 1949-1950, in Columbus, we did lunch counter sit-ins. This was long before the lunch counter sit-ins in the South. I worked with the Congress for Racial Equality, or CORE, as it was called, with George Houser and others. But I spent ten years in England and Norway. So I missed most of the civil rights movement period.
Q: Did you come into contact with any of the civil rights leaders?

Sharp: I knew Bayard Rustin for a time And after I moved back to the United States, Coretta Scott King invited me to Atlanta. They used to have a summer school on nonviolence, and she had me down there .it least three times. But I wasn't at Selma and Montgomery I was in London or Oslo.
Q: I've read that you met with people in Norway who were involved in the resistance against Hitler. This raises the ultimate dilemma for people inclined toward pacifism: How do you deal with someone like Adolf Hitler?

Sharp: It doesn't have to be made as a hypothetical situation. What did the Norwegians do during the Nazi occupation? How did they successfully resist the Norwegian fascist regime of Vidkun Quisling during the Nazi occupation? I interviewed several people on that subject, and I wrote that up and it became .i booklet. [The booklet details how Norwegian teachers braved intimidation and incarceration to band together and resist Quisling's indoctrination program for the schools.] I also interviewed several people on what was done to save the Jews of Norway. And there were other successful anti-Nazi movements, such as German women married to Jewish men, who demonstrated at Rosenstrasse. The Albert Einstein Institution actually financed the research for the book by Nathan Stoltzfus. I saw the film [Rosenstrasse] on television quite by accident just a few months ago. The film didn't convey the whole power. My information was that there were about 6,000 women participating. The film only showed a few hundred.
Q: Which cases would you cite over the past few decades as the most successful examples of nonviolent resistance?

Sharp: There are a number of them. The whole of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. They had terrible occupations, both by the Nazis and by the Soviet I Won. I hey had to endure imported Russian populations and the KGB. And they got out of the Soviet Union using nonviolence. The largest number of dead was in Lithuania, about twelve. In Latvia, it was about seven. In Estonia, no one was killed. They had done guerrilla warfare against the occupation with terrible casualties and had not succeeded. And so they tried to use other ways, and they won, with great danger, relatively quickly. Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Serbia from Milosevic, and the Ukraine all used the same pattern of resistance.
Q: Do you see any tension between nonviolence as a pragmatic tool and as an ideal?

Sharp: Some believers in ethical or religious nonviolence do not endorse or use nonviolent action. They think it's conflict and say, "Oh, no, no, we can't do that." On the other hand, main of the people using nonviolent struggle have not believed in nonviolence .is an ideal. People who believe in the ethical or religious approach to nonviolent means could assist, if they're not too arrogant, the development of pragmatic nonviolence to be used by the masses of people.

Even in India, most of the people participating in the independence struggle did not believe, as Gandhi himself did. in the religious principle. And that's grounds for hope because it says that people can use nonviolent means even though they don't believe in the ethics of nonviolence. They can believe that violence is good and violence is moral and still do nothing violent

I get that from Gandhi. That's the way he operated. His extreme asceticism and his extreme belief in ahimsa was not what he presented to the Indian National Congress. That was pure pragmatism. At the end of his life, he defends himself. He was accused of holding on to nonviolent means because of his religious belief. He says no. He says, I presented this as a political means of action, and that's what I'm saying today. And it's a misrepresentation to say that I presented this as a purely religious approach. He was very upset about that.
Q: You've said that you prefer people to think of Gandhi as a pragmatic tactician, rather than as Mahatma.

Sharp: Not tactician, strategist. That's bigger and more important. Yes, people say, "Oh, Mahatma, Oh Mahatma! I'm not a saint. There's nothing I can do." That belittles him.
Q: How did you write From Dictatorship to Democracy?

Sharp: A Burmese exile asked me to write it. I had been let illegally into Burma. I didn't know much about Burmese society, and to plan a struggle, you need to plan a strategy, you need a grand superplan. You need not only an understanding of nonviolent struggle, which we almost never have, and you also need an understanding of that society and that particular situation, which only they had. I couldn't write that. So I had to write a generic booklet on die basis of a study of dictatorships and the experience of the past few decades, and an understanding of nonviolence. I had to put all of those together.
Q: I read somewhere that you were denounced by the Burmese regime.

Sharp: We conducted two workshops in Burma. From Dictatorship to Democracy was published in Bangkok, both in Burmese and in English. The SLORC military dictatorship was extremely upset and issued denunciations in newspapers and radio and television. We also managed to get From Dictatorship to Democracy translated into four so-called ethnic languages. They were horrified. I hey denounced us as harshly as they could and they gave out our home addresses. I've been told that the denunciations didn't slop in '95. they continued. Recently, four people were sentenced to seven years in prison — for only having a copy of From Dictatorship to Democracy, not for doing anything.
Q: To what do you attribute the fact that your work has gotten so much more play abroad?

Sharp: I'm not sure. The kind of issues that people found most urgent, situations of desperation, like in the Baltic countries, like in Burma, haven't existed here. And among many Americans, there is a great belief in violence as being omnipotent.
Q: Have you reflected on the applicability of your work in protesting the Iraq War or other Bush Administration policies?

Sharp: I don't think you get rid of violence by protesting against it. This is how I differ from the multitude of people who don't like violence. I think you get rid of violence only if people see that you have a different way of acting, a different way of snuggle. Gandhi didn't organize demonstrations against the Indian National Army; he offered another way, and most of the people could follow that. The civil rights movement didn't get strength by campaigning against those people who were favoring violence. It offered another way to do the struggle. And I think this is the way. Part of my analysis is that if you don't like violence, you have to develop a substitute. Then people have a choice. If they don't see a choice, then violence is all that they really have.
Q: You haven't been disappointed by a lack of efficacy of the anti-war protests?

Sharp: The thing that has been most shocking is that the Bush Administration acted on the basis of the belief — dogma, "religion" — in the omnipotence of violence, which ignores the history of how the dictatorships under communist regimes and certain other regimes had been removed. It's by people power. That's .all ignored. The assumption is an invading country can come in, remove its official leader, arrest some of the other people, and well, then, the dictatorship is gone.
Q: So do you see a nonviolent approach working in the other countries that the Bush Administration is targeting, such as Iran?

Sharp: Our work is available in Iran and has been since 2004. People from different political positions are saying that that's the way we need to go. And that kind of struggle broadly has important precedence in Iranian/Persian history, both in the 1906 democratic revolution and in the 1979 struggle against the Shah — all predominantly nonviolent forms of struggle. If somebody doesn't decide to use military means, then it is very likely that there will be a peaceful national struggle there.
Q: What about Israel/Palestine? You've done some work there, too, and worked with Mubarak Awad, who has been the most ardent Palestinian proponent of nonviolence.

Sharp: Mubarak did his first little booklet on nonviolence during the first Intifada in the early '80s. I was there in the mid-'80s on at least three trips, and met with people in the West Bank and Jerusalem. I also met with Israelis. I spoke at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and even spoke at the Israeli Institute of Military Studies. Most of the methods — 90 percent of the methods — used in the first Intifada were that of nonviolent struggle. But Fatah leaders had this faith in the religion of violence. It was absolutely the worst thing they could have done.
Q: What was it like to be in Tiananmen Square?

Sharp: It was very dramatic, very moving. We were there three or four days before the crackdown. It was quite startling. Those people were very, very brave. As we walked across the square from our restaurant to get back to our hotel, the troops were coming in. We thought, let's go to the site and stand and watch and see what happens. There were armored personnel carriers coming in. Some Chinese said, "Get out of here! Get out of here!" They were more savvy about what might happen than we were. And so we left.
Q: How have you been received in Russia?

Sharp: I've had five translations done of my work there. When the fifth translation went to a printing press in Moscow, the successor to the KGB, the FSB, raided the presses, ordered the presses to stop, took the text away. It finally had to be printed outside of Moscow. Two of the bookstores that were selling it in Moscow then burned down within two weeks. Of course, accidentally.
Q: When did this happen?

Sharp: About a year ago. Dictators don't like us.

"If you don't like violence, you have to develop a substitute. Then people have a choice. If they don't see a choice, then violence is all that they really have."

By: Pal, Amitabh, Progressive, Mar2007

MENSA INVITATIONAL

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any
word from the Dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one
letter, and supplying a new definition.

The 2006 winners are:

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying (or building) a house, which renders the
subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

2. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

3. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize
that it was your money to start with.

4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas
from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking
down in the near future.

6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting
laid.

7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who
doesn't get it.

9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

11. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

12. Karmageddon: It's when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes,
and then the Earth explodes and it's a serious bummer.

13. Decafalon: (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day, consuming
only things that are good for you.

14. Glibido: All talk and no action.

15. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come
at you rapidly.

16. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've
accidentally walked through a spider web.

17. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom
at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

18. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit
you're eating.

Anton

Hell

... A rather bad man dies and meets Satan in a room with three doors. Satan explains, "I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that you have to spend eternity behind one of these doors. But, the good news is that you can take a peek behind each and take your choice."
So, the man opened the first door and saw a room full of people, standing on their heads on a concrete floor. Not very nice, he thought.
Opening the second door, he saw a room full of people standing on their heads on a wooden floor. Better, he thought, but best to check the last door.
Upon opening the last door, he saw a room full of people, standing waist-deep in excrement and sipping coffee.
"Of the three, this one looks best," he said and waded in to get something to drink while Satan closed the door.

A few minutes later the door opened, Satan stuck his head in and said, "Ok, coffee break`s over, back on your heads!"

Sergey

A Practical Joke

When I was four years old, I had a cat, Briciola. She was very nice with grey fur, green eyes and long white whiskers. I felt very attracted by its whiskers, so, one fine day, I cut one of them with a pair of scissors. I didn't know that they were important for her, and, when my mother discovered my joke, she became rabid and I cried all the day.

Elena

The Key of Love

By Laura Kalpakian

Her husband has no understanding of music. And she doesn't get the games he loves. But in a crisis, they suddenly find themselves in harmony.

I'm stuck in traffic, the kids are squabbling, and I'm feeling completely overbooked, what with dinner needing to be early be cause of a flute recital and late because of a soccer game and the dog still at the vet's.

"The light's changed, Mom," says Juliet, 17. Gridlock lets up; I hang a left and get on the freeway. "This isn't the way to the dry cleaners, Mom. If I can't wear my blue dress, I don't even want to play at the recital tonight."

"You look like a pincushion in that blue dress," says 15-year-old Mary from the backseat. Mary insists on being called Mojo, in keeping with her cheerleading, track, and gymnastics skills. "You're so skinny, you stick out of it," she adds.

"Shut up, muscle head," Juliet replies good-naturedly. "You're coming with me tonight, aren't you, Mom?"

"Mom's coming to our game," says Mike, 13, already taller than I am and still growing into his enormous feet.

"Your dad and Mojo are going to your game, Mike. I'm going to Juliet's recital." My announcement sets off a new scuffle, which I try to ignore.

Actually, we hardly ever miss Mike's games. I missed a couple when I had double pneumonia. But my husband? Never. Greg's a physical therapist, and he's at work before seven every morning just so he can leave early for games and practices, track meets and pep rallies, planning boards for sports parents.

When Greg Kelly and I first started dating, I thought going out to endless sporting events was tons of fun. He liked to stand up and shout. He kept his eyes on the game and his hand in mine while I tried to follow his running patter of stats and tactics. I'd never met anyone like him. I was a music-ed major from a family who used Super Bowl Sunday to go to the mall because it would be deserted. But sports were like a religious faith to Greg's family. To this day, my in-laws' house is full of trophies won by Greg's brothers. Not by Greg. He was born with weak knees, so hardcore athletics were out.

What did I care about bad knees when I fell in love with him? He had a strong mind, a great smile, energy, and enthusiasm. Early in our marriage, we could see that we'd need separate rooms for music and sports or we could not live together. So when we moved to this house, we put the piano in the living room. The TV occupies center stage in the family room, just off the kitchen. When Juliet was an infant, Greg would pace in front of the TV, patting her to sleep while he watched reruns of games. Sometimes he'd get so involved with the action, he'd shout and wake the baby up.

I chose Juliet's name for its musical lilt and romantic association. Greg liked the name because "Juliet Kelly" had the ring of an all-star athlete. He had great plans for Juliet.

"Look at her knees," Greg used to say when she was just learning to toddle and would fall down. "Her knees are great."

But Juliet surprised him. Surprised me, too, for that matter. One day she announced to her father that she didn't want to play Girls Little League. Then, at age nine, she gave her dad the bad news: She wanted to play the flute.

Greg couldn't believe it: his daughter turning her back on athletics? But he accepted her decision gracefully, like a defeated coach, crossing the field to shake hands with the winner. No hard feelings.

Juliet's recital was held in a small church with fine acoustics. I got misty listening to my daughter play Debussy's "Girl with the Flaxen Hair." In her blue dress and high heels, she looked very grown-up performing with an ensemble of advanced wind instrumentalists.

I'd taught several of these young musicians and knew almost everyone there. However, I couldn't place the woman who came up to me after the performance, older than I, with an anxious air and a deferential manner. Her shoulders were hunched, and her hair was badly dyed-too dark for her pale face.

"Mrs. Kelly, I'm Cathy Waiters," she began. "My son is so impressed with your daughter Juliet. She's such a fine musician."

I told her thanks and asked her to point out her son. She nodded toward a corner where Juliet was deep in conversation with a tall kid with black hair, olive skin, and a bemused smile on his face. "Shannon," the woman said, "Shannon Walters is my son."

Juliet had mentioned Shannon. But I'd always assumed she was referring to a girl. "Shannon tells me you are a music teacher, Mrs. Kelly," she said.

"Call me Sara, please. Yes. I teach a few piano students at home and part-time in the elementary school."

"Music is a great gift. I am so grateful my son has a passion for it. Music has given me a lot of solace in life." Cathy looked wistful, and for a moment, I thought she might tell me why she had needed solace. But the moment passed.

On the way home, I asked Juliet, "Why didn't you ever mention that Shannon was a boy?"

"You never asked."

What could I say? I'd never asked.

"I was wondering if we could invite Shannon and his mother to my family birthday party next week," Juliet went on.

"What about your girlfriends? You always ask your girlfriends."

She ignored this observation. "I thought if you and Dad met Shannon's mother, then you'd let us date."

"We let you date! You went to the prom last year with Mike Weinstein."

Keeping my eyes on the road, I felt Juliet's patronizing look. "I've known Mike since the first grade," she said. "He lives down the street, remember? That doesn't qualify as a date."

"Tell me about Shannon," I said calmly.

"Well," she laughed, "he's not a girl."

Shannon was the only child of hardworking Cathy and a feckless man named Dusty Waiters. Cathy had divorced Dusty several years ago, but he still lived in town. Once reminded of his name, I recalled a guy who'd broken up a couple of PTA meetings with his boisterous demands; he had seemed to those present a bully who indulged in chaos for its own sake.

Juliet said that Dusty never showed up at Shannon's recitals or jazz concerts and only visited Shannon when he thought he could embarrass him or hurt Cathy's feelings. Shannon was very protective of his mother. He was incredibly talented. The music teacher charged Shannon half of what she charged everyone else, Juliet went on, because he was so gifted and Cathy's salary as a receptionist was so paltry. Shannon had already picked out the university music schools he would apply to--all top places. "He wants to write music, not just play it," Juliet added. "He wants a music scholarship more than anything else."

I listened silently. Clearly, their relationship was established. How had I missed this? "Don't worry, Mom," Juliet added. "I just want to go out with Shannon, and I know what you and Dad are like."

I wanted to ask, "What are we like?" But I didn't venture there. I was half afraid she would tell me--and half afraid she would duck the question and that her evasion would keep me awake at night.

After we got home, I slipped into bed beside Greg, who was reading some coach's memoirs of a winning season. He asked about the recital so he could be specifically enthusiastic when he talked to Juliet tomorrow. I told him, though I didn't mention Shannon Waiters. I was not at all sure how Greg would react to Juliet's affection for this boy. He kissed my cheek, turned out the light, and rolled over.

I lay there, listening to his quiet breathing. How odd, I thought. All these years I have lived with Greg, our separate strengths and weaknesses, values and instincts have braided together, so that to our children, we seem to be a single unit. And yet he still has a tin ear for music, and I have little understanding of the sports he loves. What are we like? Could I even answer that question?

As summer drew to a close, baseball fans statewide were suddenly ignited into a frenzy of excitement when our usually lackluster major, league team, the Condors, started winning. Collective euphoria reigned when the Condors qualified for the division play-offs. The Condors had a chance at the World Series! For the first time ever!

During the games leading up to the play-offs, Greg, Mike, and Mojo all took places at the table where they could see the TV. They barely spoke. After they ate, they would slide to the low couch in front of the TV.

Juliet and I did the dishes, looking over our shoulders now and then at the TV. One night, during a commercial break, Juliet walked over to Greg and asked about having Shannon Waiters and his mother as our guests at her birthday.

Mojo laughed. "Shannon's a geek!"

I was about to reprimand Mojo, but Greg did it for me. Then the commercial ended, and his attention returned to the TV.

"Dad," Juliet repeated, making a move as though she might step in front of the TV, "I want to invite Shannon and his mother to my birthday."

Greg nodded, still spellbound by the Condors. "Sure, honey, invite her. Any friend of yours is welcome."

"Greg," I said.

Juliet shook her head. "Wait till the next commercial, Mom."

Birthdays are a big deal in our family. You don't have to do any chores, and you get to choose whatever you want for breakfast and dinner, no questions asked. One year, Mike wanted frozen corn dogs. Mojo wanted pizza.

For her birthday dinner, Juliet asked for my special pasta with clam-and-artichoke sauce, a recipe I had gotten from the chef at Café Eden. To go with this, she asked for a big summer fruit salad and a green salad, a spectacular plate of hors d'oeuvres served with rustic Italian bread, and her favorite chocolate orange cake. We tied balloons to the light fixture over the table. I ironed the best tablecloth and put out china and crystal glasses for both wine and water.

Yes, all was in perfect readiness for Juliet's 18th birthday, complete with special guests Shannon Waiters and his mother. Except that the Condors' final play-off game was scheduled for that same evening. We had to have the TV on.

I tried to reason with Greg, to no avail. "You'll watch TV and ignore the party. Ignore Shannon and his mother. Ignore Juliet."

"I won't. I'll pay attention. I'll be…whatever you want. But I have to see the game, Sara!"

"It's only the play-offs."

"Right! More important than the World Series! If they lose, they may never get another chance.… "

"What about Juliet?"

"She can watch the game too. So can Shannon and his mother…what's her name--Cathy?"

"What if they don't want to? What if they don't care about the game?"

"That's not possible. Everyone cares."

"OK, here's a compromise," I offered. "You can sit in a place at the table where you can still see the TV, but the sound will be off. Then you can still carry on a conversation with Cathy and Shannon."

"Shannon sounds like a girl's name."

"I assure you, he is not a girl. Just ask your daughter." Something in my voice must have rung Greg's alarms, because he agreed to the compromise.

Mike and Mojo grumbled audibly and said they'd rather watch the game upstairs than have dinner with the Waiters. I forbade this. It was Juliet's birthday.

Juliet grumbled, too, though she knew that muting the TV was the best she could expect under the circumstances.

On the afternoon of the party, the overhead fan cooled the kitchen and family room; lemonade in crystal glasses and the hors d'oeuvres were laid out on the coffee table in front of the couch. Juliet looked lovely in a pale summer sheath. Shannon wore a tie, a dress shirt--long sleeves and cuff links, no less. Cathy looked prim and uncomfortable in a beige summer suit. Mike and Mojo were planted on the family-room floor, right in front of the TV. Greg hung back and chatted with both Shannon and Cathy, though his gaze hardly strayed from the game. His face registered the Condors' every run, hit, and error.

After a few minutes, Juliet and Shannon strolled outside to the patio and the garden. I passed the hors d'oeuvre plates to Cathy and made small talk about the kids being seniors this year, applying for colleges and the like, asking about music schools. Cathy spoke in her slow, cultured fashion. "Shannon plays tenor, soprano, and alto sax, all three. I sometimes cry just to hear him practice. He has a gift. I will rejoice when he goes to college. But I'm afraid I will be diminished. Alone."

Though I could imagine her being a very gracious receptionist, she was clearly ill at ease with me. Spreading a bit of Brie on her bread, Cathy asked, "What will I do with myself?. My job is nice but quite dull. Certainly not like yours. Being a music teacher must be wonderful."

"I like watching kids improve at things. Training, discipline, and experience. Musicians have to work every bit as hard as athletes."

"Sports uses the whole body," Greg offered, then added, "Top of the fourth."

"So does music," said Cathy before I could even reply. "Look at the hands of a pianist. Look at Sara's hands."

My hands, strong, with long fingers and short nails, are really pretty undistinguished. I laughed and passed the roasted red peppers. "Do you play an instrument, Cathy?"

"I read music. I used to play the piano. We don't have one anymore."

I would have invited her to play ours in the living room, but then the whole birthday party would be broken up, Juliet and Shannon outside, Cathy at the piano, and the rest of them mesmerized by the Condors.

My pasta water was about to boil, and though I had the salads all done, this clam-and-artichoke sauce has to be done all at once and served immediately, so I left Cathy on the family-room couch with Greg and went into the kitchen. My family erupted with loud cheers as a Condors batter hit a home run and brought three men in.

I looked over and saw Cathy Waiters smiling. She asked if the Condors had ever played in the World Series. Astonished, Greg told Cathy that this would be their first, assuming they won the play-offs.

By the top of the sixth, we were all at the table, the meal served, and we'd sung "Happy Birthday to You" to Juliet at least three times. I was pleased at the lemony scent, the fresh-chopped parsley, and the whiff of the sea from the clam sauce. Now I was free to enjoy my lovely daughter's 18th birthday and study her guests.

Shannon Walters was livelier than his mother, but there was a low-key quality about him just the same. Very different from the high school kids I was used to. He glanced over at Cathy often, as if to offer confidence to his mom, rather than the other way around.

Throughout dinner, the phone kept ringing after every base hit--Greg's brothers calling from Oakland and Seattle. Finally, Greg just put the phone on the table. I wanted to throw it across the room but knew it was hopeless.

And then I heard a knock at the front door. I got up, fully prepared to send away Mojo's cheerleading girlfriends.

A man stood at my door. Perhaps. 50. Tall and broad shouldered, he exuded a burly confidence. He wore jeans and a T-shirt, and, I realized with a start, he was the image of his son, Shannon. Shock scrambled across my face.

"Hi!" he said. "Dusty Walters. Cathy's neighbor told me where Shannon and Cathy were off to, and I got your address out of the phone book." He opened the screen door and shook my hand with a grip a little too tight. "I need to talk to Shannon."

"I don't think you can come in right now," I said. "We're having a family party."

"Won't take a minute," he said, pushing past me into the living room. "You play the piano, huh? What a waste of time. Are they back there?" He waved in the direction of the voices, and, speechless, I followed him into the kitchen.

Greg, Mojo, and Mike tore their gaze from the TV and stared. But their shock was nothing compared with the look on the faces of Shannon and Cathy Waiters. Cathy blanched. Shannon's face seized up as Dusty burst in and greeted them.

Shannon stood up. He seemed about to vault over the table, to stand between Dusty and Cathy. He glanced at Juliet. "This is my father," he said, color flooding his sallow complexion.

The phone rang again, and Greg picked it up. His brother from Oakland.

"Don't mind me. I just wanna talk to Shannon, but it can wait," said Dusty, plopping down on the couch. "I'll just watch the game till you're done."

He popped a couple of olives in his mouth, found the remote, hit the mute button, and turned up the volume. The noise and clamor of the game filled the space around us.

Shannon turned to me. "Excuse me for a moment." He walked to the couch.

"Great game!" cried Dusty without turning around. "Except the bums are losing."

Suddenly I saw, or thought I saw, the whole tapestry of Cathy Walters's past: the bright-eyed woman she must have been when she married Dusty Waiters, how he must have seemed to her larger than life. And then how she had lived in his shadow. I understood how Shannon gave her strength and purpose and how she would indeed be diminished when he left home. And yet I knew that she would do everything in her power to help him leave, to help him fulfill his dreams.

As I listened to the drone of Shannon's voice while he spoke quietly to Dusty, I felt I was in the presence of a kind of heroism. Not gold medals, not triumphs on the court or the mat or the field or the ice, but just as hard earned, practiced, and demanding. I felt bad that I hadn't been able to protect Shannon and Cathy from Dusty Waiters, but I knew that Shannon and Cathy had been protecting each other for years.

"I said I'll wait," Dusty insisted, brushing Shannon off. "I'll just sit here and watch. Everyone in America is watching the game." He popped a few more olives. "Hit the ball!" he cried out to the TV.

Shannon went back to Juliet. "Maybe Mom and I should leave."

"No." She took his hand. "I don't want you to leave. Either of you."

Greg barked into the phone, "Don't call back--I'll call you," then hung up on his brother. He looked at me. Suddenly, I knew the answer to the question "What are we like?" We're in accord, that's what we are. No matter the ways in which we are different, fundamentally, we are in accord. Maybe that's the gift of a long marriage: that you give up a part of your individuality to be part of another person, and he gives up his to be part of you.

Greg strode across the family room and took the remote from Dusty Walters. He turned the TV off. The sudden silence fell upon us like the collapse of a huge tent, billowing out to the farthest corners of the room. It was quiet, save for the hum of the fans. A distant dog barked.

"Mr. Walters," Greg said, "maybe everyone in America is watching this game, but we're not. You need to go somewhere else to watch it."

Greg then tossed the remote over to the counter. He offered his hand to Dusty Walters, said it had been a pleasure to meet him, and in the same fluid movement, pulled him to his feet, clapped him on the back, and escorted him out of the family room, talking nonstop about stats, RBIs, and the inadequacy of the shortstop as he ushered Shannon's father to the front door. We heard it close.

"Is everyone ready for birthday cake?" I asked, looking at Cathy Walters's frozen expression. "Cathy?"

We heard a car start up and drive away. Cathy's face seemed to thaw, and though it would be too much to say she smiled, her features assumed an uncertain ease.

Mojo cleared the plates, and I sent Mike looking for the birthday candles. Greg came back into the room and sat down in my place, beside Cathy. His back was to the TV. Mike handed me the birthday candles and reached for the remote. He popped it on, and the roar from the stands, the crack of the bat filled the room.

"Turn it off," said Greg.

"But, Dad," Mojo cried, "it's the top of the ninth. And they're down by two runs!"

"Turn it off," Greg repeated. And this time Mike did so. The fan turned overhead. "It's a birthday party. What we need is some music."

Yes, I thought: This is where discipline, training, and experience pay off. In this family, there are no weak knees.