Opening Day

Today is Opening Day, the first day of a 162-game (at least) season, and already I feel like I'm behind. I just found out last night, for instance, that there is a Red Sox Kid Nation, and I haven't even bought a Sox hat for myself, even though I was at a sporting goods store yesterday. Truth be told, however, I don't know if I'm ready to wear a Sox hat. It's on my list of things to do, but I'm not mentally prepared yet.

I suppose that today is also the official opening day of this little experiment of mine, though I hope that people will read the previous entries. I'm a little nervous about the whole thing, to be honest, because I don't know how it will all turn out and I don't know how people will react to my attempts to change my stripes. To overcome that, I'll just have to rely on the relentless optimism that always infuses Opening Day.

But I learned this morning that that optimism must be a function of age. I woke up before Sam this morning and got the sports section all ready for him, so that as soon as he came downstairs I could tell him what day it was.

"Look," I said when he woke up. "It's a picture of Curt Schilling. He's pitching today, on Opening Day. It's Opening Day, Sam!"

"Yeah," he said. "I know that." And he calmly turned on Spongebob Squarepants. No special Opening Day routine for that kid, apparently.