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Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details. The meaning of life in a game of horseshoes. By J. G. Fabiano The thunderstorm that had been threatening finally unleashed its deluge of warm summer rain. We abandoned our horseshoe game, in the nick of time, to gather under the large green umbrella over the picnic table. The first order of business was to make sure that we all knew who was ahead in the game, ready for when we resumed play. Then there was a lull as we listened to the rumble of thunder and watched the pouring rain shrink our backyard into a gray circle of about 50 feet. I sat on my little bench and looked around at the damp, disheveled group that I was with. There were nine of us, all men; one happened to be a builder who had moved to York a few months before I did and married my wife's twin sister. Next to him was a giant of a man who also lived in York. His main claim to fame, in our little group, was that he was a pretty useful member of the bowling team that was captained by my brother-in-law, the builder. He isn't family, exactly, but close, because he had the good sense to marry the cute cashier who used to work at the old Parson's Market, and makes one hell of a good strawberry preserve! Also sheltering with us, under the umbrella, was a retired lawyer whom I had never seen before but who reminded me of the late Andy Warhol. He was quiet at first but, as the storm was slow in passing, we fortified ourselves with a few chilled mudslides which loosened him up a little. He had no interest in horseshoes but somebody had told him that it would be fun and, because he had arrived last, he was my partner. He quickly came to the conclusion that he was a better player than I and, if you had ever seen me pitch a shoe, you would know that his assessment was entirely accurate! Also on our bench was another visitor to our fair town, an English professor from some college town in Indiana. He was distantly related to somebody in our group and was recruited for the occasion primarily because he threw a great shoe. Next to him was a retired teacher who moved up here a few years ago from Rhode Island. He was a distinguished gentleman whose gray hair suggested great wisdom, except for his taste in friends. However, he couldn't resist the competition of any game, even if it was just horseshoes. Perched on the bench beside him was his brother, who was another retired teacher. Together with their wives they had been coming to York every summer since the 1950's and when they retired they moved here permanently. Next to him was the man who owned the home and thus the horseshoe pits. He was a real estate agent who married a younger woman and had been the brunt of many jokes because he had been trying to start a family. We were constantly cracking wise with him by asking him such witty questions as: "Hey, you sure you're up the job?" Privately, I can't imagine why anybody would want to start a family at this point in life but maybe that's proof that he has bigger you-know-what's than the rest of us. Finally, there was a rugged-looking gentleman who became a friend of the group, not through marriage, but through his bocce skills at the beach. He too used to come up from Massachusetts every summer but recently uprooted himself to become a citizen of Maine. In other words, he was no longer part of the competition. As we huddled together there, in our little microcosm of humanity, all I could think of was the front page banner headline from next week's Independent that would read, 'Nine Idiots Killed by Lightning under Umbrella.' The rain hammered harder and harder on the umbrella and nobody seemed inclined to make a dash for the house; besides, the house was full of women and we had a cooler full of mudslides! Somehow the talk meandered, from one of those meaningless but fun guy-conversations about who was the better summer athlete, into one of those conversations about life, death, sickness, health, marriage and divorce. It reminded me of those movies my wife always wants me to take her to. The ones where half-a-dozen women get together in a house, in the heartland, to complain about how their lives didn't work out the way they expected them to, and how this was all the fault of men. It began when the Andy Warhol look-alike stated that, because both involved criminal behavior, there was very little difference between a divorce lawyer and a criminal lawyer. Everybody had a chuckle and then somebody took a poll to see how many of us were into our second marriage. It turned out to be three. This was actually a little less than the national average and we took that as a bit of a victory. The builder then exclaimed that he wouldn't give up 50 % of his assets for anybody! The lawyer corrected him by stating that he would be lucky if he only gave up 50%. The professor then corrected the lawyer by stating that in Indiana the law stated that, if there were no children, the assets had to be divided neatly in half. Everybody thought this was a good thing except for the builder who continued to state that he still wouldn't give up 50% for anybody. There were a few more laughs and then, with peculiar ease, the conversation shifted from marriage to cancer. Another poll was taken and it turned out that three of our happy little band were cancer survivors. The professor declared that his solution to prostate cancer had been to have the whole thing taken out. I couldn't help but notice that everybody at the table squinted a bit at that comment. Then he said two weeks after the surgery his wife found out she was pregnant. "Nice last shot!" somebody remarked. The professor smiled and said he was just learning to live with the fact that he would be 76 when his child reached 20. At that moment all heads turned toward the owner of the house and the builder exclaimed that there was still some hope. The owner never said a word. One of the retired teachers then said he was just glad to be alive after surviving throat cancer. Months of chemotherapy and radiation treatment had cut his weight dramatically, reducing him, quite literally, from a large man to a smaller man - though his spirit was as large as ever. Nobody at the table spoke. We were all glad to have him there and nobody wanted to admit it if they had ever thought that he might not make it through another summer. The retired lawyer mentioned his bout with colon cancer. However, he didn't seem inclined to volunteer much more, except to leave us wondering if this brush with mortality had prompted him to retire early so he could enjoy life more, even if that enjoyment was something as minor as playing horseshoes with a bunch of friends on a summer afternoon. Then the conversation turned back to the important business of planning future competitions in July and August and the mood under the umbrella brightened noticeably. The rain passed as suddenly as it had started and we went back to the afternoon's competition and the air filled once again with the clang of horseshoes and the cheers and jeers of the participants. My brother-in-law turned to me as he walked towards the pits and asked if I was going to turn what just happened into a column. I told him I'd have to think about it. After all, what was so important about a game of horseshoes? The End
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