Growing Up

I must admit while watching President Obama  reflect back on his teenage years  during his speech in South Africa yesterday it made me somehow  think about certain things from my childhood.One I remember in particular from my early days in Chicago was a sports moment sort of or at least it was supposed to be.My  Father was good friends with the head groundskeeper at the old Comiskey park where the White Sox used to play, one of my favorite players back then was a second baseman Nellie Fox,well my dad being the good dad he was he arranged for me to meet Nellie after a game. When the big day arrived i was pumped ,I  must have been about 8 or 9 then and to go to a major league baseball game and then meet my favorite player on the team I was the envy of my neighborhood as I had told all my friends  what was about to go down. Everything was  cool until we got to the game for some reason I thought I was gonna get special seating, since i was  meeting a player after the game , instead the seats that we wound up in were in the upper deck down the right field line, not the best seats in the park by far, but still I was gonna get  a chance to meet the man Nellie Fox after the game.But for some reason as the game went along i started acting like a brat, complaning about the seats and just being a spoiled kid for the rest of the game, that is  until I made the final mistake of uttering the words " I WANNA GO HOME" . Looking back now I must have thought that when i said those magic four words everything was gonna change right away, we would move down to the box seats right behind the dougout and on the scoreboard I would see a message LiL JJ is in the house to meet Nellie Fox after the game. Anyway as it turned out my father took me home,I never ever got a chance to meet Nellie ever and my friends thought I had made up the whole story,wow was I ever the biggest  knucklehead ever, looking  back years later I don't know why I acted like I did but I guess it was all part of growing up.