Lifestyle

from The Trussville Tribune – January 18 - 24, 2023

Outdoors

Sean of the South: Uber

By Sean Dietrich, Sean of the South Commentary

There we were. Standing outside the Back Forty Beer Company Brewery in Birmingham, Alabama. Me and a few friends. We had just finished watching an NFL football game on a large screen inside, and drinking Ovaltine.

The Uber arrived. “Are you Sean?” the Uber driver asked.

“I’ve been called worse,” I said.

We all piled into the backseat of a nice SUV. It never fails to astound me how nice Uber cars are.

My personal transportation, for example, is not nice. I drive a Ford that is 24 years old. That’s old enough to have several baby Fords of its own. My automotive interior is covered in canine fur and slobber. My seats are gnarled and look like a deranged coonhound has been chewing on the upholstery.

I have a broken radio. The A/C only works on days of the week beginning with P. And there is a hula girl mounted on my dashboard named Barbara.

But our Uber driver had a nice-looking car.

Tonight, our cab driver was a young woman. College-age. She was paralyzingly sweet. She spoke with a Birmingham accent that was thick enough to spread on a biscuit. And when one of my friends almost ralphed on her floorboards, she was cool about it.

“Y’all, is he gonna be okay?” the driver asked.

“He’ll be fine,” one of us explained. “He’s Episcopalian.”

She nodded solemnly as though she understood exactly what this meant.

Our driver followed the route home on her GPS. And she took each extra turn gingerly, taking care not to jostle the fully loaded Episcopalian among us.

When we approached the railroad tracks near Avondale, we were blocked by a passing freight train. We parked at the railroad crossing, while my Episcopalian friend placed his head between his knees and began reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

And I talked to the driver.

“Do you like your job?” I asked.

“Oh, I love it. My husband works days, and I watch the babies. I work nights, driving for Uber, while he puts the kids to bed.”

The young woman leads a busy life. Blindingly busy. She is 21 years old (younger than my truck). She was raised in Magic City. She and her husband work hard for a living. Bone hard. They have two children.

She had her first child at age 18. Her newborn son was born with a chromosomal abnormality, he could not digest food. When the doctors first told her this, it was a crushing blow.

“Y’all,” she began, “we lived in the NICU. My son was practically dying the moment he was born. Doctors thought I was going to lose my baby. I was a mess.”

Doctors put her son on a feeding tube. They treated him. She and the teenage father of her son lived at UAB, surviving on vending machine food, sleeping on vinyl chairs, praying for their child. Day and night. Night and day.

“I was so scared,” she said. “All these doctors, telling me that my son, my baby, might die at any time. But, you know what? My son lived. He’s 3 years old today. My son is alive.”

Her son is not without his obstacles. He was recently diagnosed with autism. He is nonverbal. He can’t communicate.

“But I know my baby,” she says. “I have this way of communicating with him that is above words. I always know what he’s saying even though he’s saying nothing at all.”

She went on to say that she knows there will be other diagnoses in the future, due to her son’s chromosomal problems. But she tells me she knows can deal with it.

“I know my life is going to be hard. I know my son is going to have struggles, I know we might not make much money, I know hard times are coming. But I can get through them. That’s what I’ve learned about myself. I’m stronger than I think I am. So is my husband. I have faith.”

“In God?” one of us asked.

She nods. “Yes, but I also have faith in the doctors at UAB. Those men and women save lives. They made a miracle in my baby’s life. And they saved mine, too. They are good people.”

The Uber finally arrived at our house. The young woman threw her car into Park. We helped my exceedingly cheerful Episcopalian friend from the vehicle. We told our driver goodnight.

My Episcopalian friend bid farewell by saying: “The Lord be with you, darling.”

Our Uber driver smiled at us and we all knew that we were looking at a young woman who will be canonized in her own lifetime.

“Thanks, y’all,” she said.

And also with y’all.

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Lass But Not Least: Home Improvement

By Ken Lass

You glance up at the clock and realize it’s 5 pm on a weekday night. Time to get your child/grandchild dressed, gather up the equipment, and head to the Trussville sports park for his or her baseball game, or soccer game, or practice. You wonder why, for some reason, these events always seem to be scheduled right in the teeth of rush hour traffic.

You battle the downtown Trussville gridlock and finally arrive at the sports park, only to find the nearest open parking space is somewhere between Argo and Springville. Out of desperation, you create your own parking space. After all, the folks who drove that minivan you just blocked in probably won’t mind. Besides, that handicapped sticker dangling from their rearview mirror is probably a forgery anyway.

You bolt out of the car with your young athlete and trudge to the field. Somehow you always wind up toting the backpack. At last, the game begins. You slump back into a spot on the blisteringly hot bleachers and draw a deep breath. You find yourself pondering why you have spent all that money on uniforms, gear, and registration fees, just to watch your child completely lose interest in the game as he sits down behind second base, entertaining himself by filling his ball glove with infield dirt, and then pouring it out on his newly washed pants.

Can you relate to this experience? What if I told you there was a way you could get your child involved in a city recreation activity without having to leave the comfort of your own home? An activity even you could get involved in. And it’s free!!

It’s true. I noticed the other day the Tribune reporting the Trussville Parks & Rec department has announced a new program which they call “esports.” For those of us born in the Dark Ages, the “e” stands for electronic. That’s right. It’s video games. League video games. All those hours you thought your kid wasted staring at a monitor, furiously manipulating joy sticks and colored buttons, can now be channeled to develop his competitive instincts and maybe even sharpen their multi-tasking ability.

TPC is offering three different game competitions on three different nights. Monday is Mario Kart, Thursday brings Rocket League, and Friday it’s Fortnight. I’ve never played Fortnight, and I have no clue what Rocket League may look like, but I have played me some Mario Kart. Oh brother, have I. My pre-teen son mastered it quickly and always challenged me to races. He would literally toy with me, allowing me to lead the entire race until just before the finish line, whereupon he would release bombs that blew me off the road, then pass by me to win, all the while laughing his annoying little head off.

Frustrating as it was, I did have to admire how the games seemed to develop his reflexes and force him to think quickly and analytically. He’s in his late thirties now, well-established in a solid career, and I actually think the video games helped him in certain ways. He still fires up the console occasionally, though his games are now far more complex and probably more graphic than just watching Luigi careen off the road into a brick wall.

You will have to join the Trussville Parks & Rec community on the Mission Control app to join a league. The website is https://missioncontrol.app. link/communities/66. Mission Control bills itself as “a platform where players can squad up with their crew or compete against frenemies in local recreational esports leagues.” Duke University has a league on the site. So does Special Olympics of Oregon. And now Trussville has one as well. Deadline for registration for this season is January 27. Got questions? You can ask Josh Taylor at jtaylor@trussville.org.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand the value of good old outdoor team sports. There are social and health benefits to running up and down a soccer field or rounding the bases. Then again, if the Moody underground landfill fire is still blowing smoke into our collective lungs, you may want to rethink outdoor activity. That’s a column for another day.

But just think. No uniforms, no special equipment, no battling through traffic, no contemplating illegal activity to secure a parking space. If something like this had existed when I was a child, my parents would probably have never sent me to school. Of course, when I was a child, we didn’t even know what a computer was.

If this concept is new to you, you are a bit late to the party. Avid gamers have been slapping on the headphones and playing video games against opponents in other locations for years. Might be fun to try.

Just be aware there is a good possibility you might get beat by someone who is not as old as the slippers you are wearing.