After dropping one son off for his Pan-Mass ride this past weekend, I headed towards another son who had a baseball tournament all weekend in Northborough, Massachusetts. On Sunday, the weather was beautiful, and I was really looking forward to watching some baseball as I approached the field. It was the kind of day that didn’t feel like anything could go wrong. But the universe wanted to try and mess with that.
A Helluva How Do You Do
While making my way over to the third-base line, I thought I’d say hi to some of my fellow parents, when I was suddenly—and quite rudely—crapped on by an osprey resting some eighty feet above my head. There’s a nest on top of one of the field lights at the New England Baseball Complex, and I walked right into the line of where an osprey family likes to drop its waste. This bit of excrement smacked me squarely on the back of the head, where the hair parts, making direct contact with the skin before ricocheting onto my pants. The shrapnel on my head felt cold.
Some friends observed the whole thing—with a chuckle. I wasn’t ready to laugh though. I think I may have let out an expletive or two, and without skipping a beat, pulled a U-turn. My destination? The nearest men’s room.
Beware of this pole on the right at NEBC. There’s an osprey family with a sense of humor!
Just Trying to Help
When I got back from the bathroom, I could laugh. It actually didn’t take too long to clean up, which was a welcome relief. But as I laughed with the other parents about the odds of being target practice for the local wildlife, something strange happened. Other parents continued to walk and stand right in the spot where I was nailed. Like any good Samaritan would, I warned those people of the danger they were in, but not a single one of them took my advice.
A couple of women just looked at me and said, “I know. I’m watching them.” Some men didn’t say anything at all, as if responding was harder than moving out of the way of an incoming poop missile. The general sense I got was that people felt the chances of getting struck were negated because I had already taken a bullet for everyone. Or that maybe they thought they were smarter than me, so there was no chance they’d allow some dumb bird to get them. Whatever was going on, I didn’t convince anyone to move out of the strike zone. Maybe they all wanted a chance to laugh at themselves.
Past Experiences
This was the third time in my life a bird has pooped on me.
The first time, I was five or so, leaving an ice cream stand in Florida. As I stepped out from beneath the shop’s protective awning, I prepared to take my first bite of strawberry ice cream—which no longer looked strawberry-colored. When I asked my mom how that was possible, she screamed and rushed me to the public restroom. It was sticky and white, and everywhere. I think it was a seagull that got me.
Whatever it was, the old wives’ tale at the time was that bubble gum could get sticky bird crap out of hair, so she started applying chewed-up Carefree gum to the mess on my head. It didn’t work that well. A half hour later, I still had a ton of bird crap on my head, mixed in with about six pieces of gum.
Hits different when you’re young and have ice cream!
The second time a bird got me, I was on a soccer field at my high school. I was wearing a ballcap when I felt a direct hit on the brim. This crap looked like oil, and at first I thought maybe I’d been hit by some airplane’s leaky fuselage. Looking up, I couldn’t see a plane, though. Or a bird. I must have been hit by some sort of long-range heat-seeking torpedo. I like to think it was an eagle. Whatever it was, it ruined my hat.
Lucky Number Three?
That last strike was some thirty years ago, so I’ve had a good run between hits. But now, lucky number three has happened. People like to say that getting pooped on by a bird is lucky, which is funny, because I don’t remember anything particularly good happening after getting struck before. But maybe, as people also say, “third time’s a charm,” and I just needed to get pooped on three times to make the luck work.
I have a friend who once told his wife after getting crapped on, “I don’t think it’s good luck. I think it’s shit luck.” That’s probably more accurate. But whatever happens—good luck or bad—you just have to laugh. I could have had a terrible day if I focused on the displeasure of having bird crap on my shorts. Instead, I had a great day watching my son, talking with friends, and enjoying the weather.
In fact, now that I think about it, this was the first time I laughed about getting crapped on. The first time I was miserable. The second time, I was in high school and embarrassed. Maybe that’s what lucky number three was for: a chance to laugh off what I couldn’t before. But that doesn’t mean I liked it, and you better believe that I sprinted past that osprey nest every time I walked that way for the rest of the day—which got a lot of laughs.