Redsoxchickie: Just This Side of Stalking

Until I can regain my composure over what transpired over the past few weeks, I’ll give you this glimpse into my psyche and why people who mocked me then jumped on the bandwagon.

I’m very superstitious, a shocking revelation, I know, and if you read my column on why we lost the ALCS last year you know it was all my fault. Well I took several steps to ensure those mistakes would never happen again. Here’s a look into how I helped my boys this year.

The shirt: Since last year I’ve taken to signing up for free stuff when I’m at the park and try to wear the t-shirt I get throughout the season (I’m superstitious but hygienic so I do wash it). Well, out of frustration and feeling like an ex-girlfriend who just got dumped for the second time, after game 3 of the ALCS I wore the same shirt I wore when Ortiz hit the home run to win the ALDS to bed instead of the free t-shirt I had worn all season. The bottle of wine I had consumed before bedtime had no bearing on this decision, that’s my story anyway. It’s a cute baseball style T from Old Navy I got for $4, but I digress. I wore it the whole next day, and as you know we won….and so I wore the shirt again….and again…and so we never lost again. The moral of the story is that when the post season starts you may want to rethink the wardrobe.

The candle: Everyone wanted to know about the candle. And before now my response was “We don’t talk about the candle!!!” It isn’t a superstition if you go blabbing it everywhere people!!! Well now the story can be told. Last year right before Boone hit the walk-off home run the candle inexplicably burn out mere seconds before he hit it. Otherwise it had worked perfectly as a rally candle. Every post-season game that they trailed I had lit it up to light a fire under the offense. Well this year I took it a little farther. If simply lighting the candle didn’t work, which was after Game 3 of the ALCS, I would rub it 3 times and say “Please let the Red sox win tonight”, if it didn’t work I’d do it up to 2 more times. It never failed. I know, I have problems, leave me alone.

The coffee: In the morning I required a hot XL, cinnamon coffee and in the evenings a large iced cinnamon coffee. Things got ugly the morning of Game 4 when the drive-thru Dunkies lady insisted I asked for “vanilla”. Obviously the woman didn’t know who she was dealing with. I would never just say “vanilla” I always say “French Vanilla”, so I insisted back nicely that I had, in fact, asked for Cinnamon, all the while thinking that maybe in Russian cinnamon meant vanilla since that was their first language. They still tried to shove the coffee at me! Finally, after I asked them to make me what I asked for, they begrudgingly gave me a new cup, but the head lady snaps back, “Everyone with a headset heard you say Vanilla!” and almost throws the cup at me!!! I wanted to grab her by the neck and ask her “Do you REALLY want to be responsible for the Red Sox losing game 7 of the ALCS because I didn’t get the god-damned cinnamon coffee I asked for bee-atch?!?!?!?!?!” But I decided I needed some good karma and simply said thanks and muttered “bee-atch” under my breath.

The cookie: At my first game of the season there was a group of people giving out “Reverse the Curse” cookies. I told my Ticket Buddy Rob I would eat it later in the game if I got a hankerin’ for something sweet, he freaked out and said if I ate the cookie and we lost the world series it would be all my fault. How can I argue with logic like that? So away went the cookie into my freezer where it still resides today. I’m looking for a dynasty baby! That thing isn’t getting eaten until I’m 90 and have to gum it while my dentures are soaking.

Random things I did that could be held against me in a court of law if my sanity ever comes into question: I had to take the same route to and from work every day. If we won the night before I had to exit my house then enter then exit again so I was in it during good game karma. I tried to let 3 people a day cross in the crosswalks in front of my car. When I was home watching the game I would lay down on my bed in the fetal position if we were pitching and stand-up if we were hitting. I convinced my mother that she couldn’t come home from the hospital because I had taken her there when we were losing Game 4 of the ALCS and they kept winning while she was there. I’d eat peanuts in groups of 3. Nothing in my room could change position at anytime. I made sure to watch all three clinchers with my Ticket Buddy Rob with whom I saw Game 3 of the ALDS and made sure to take him to see Game 4 of the World Series with the people I had watched two winning Super Bowls. I didn’t read the sports pages for 2 weeks. I didn’t use the words win or clinch in the same sentence as the Red Sox for the entire month of October. I didn’t write on my website since the ALDS because when I did we lost three straight. There’s a few more but I’m pleading the fifth for my competency hearing.

The best part of all this was of course getting into other people’s heads. Those who mocked me at the end of September soon found themselves watching the games and performing their own rituals. Now they know what its like to be me but only taken down about 50 notches. Just as well it’s on a smaller scale. After all, being me is a full time job, plus costly on the Tums. The good news is I have 5 months vacation before I have to start doing all this again.