After such a stellar experience at the Rocket’s basketball game, Rick and I figured Josiah might enjoy a professional baseball game. Well, that’s not really accurate. Truth be told, the Cleveland Indians were in town.  Rick’s from Cleveland and has followed the team for as long as I can remember. They never play in Houston.

This was a first and Rick wanted to be there.

So, we bought inexpensive tickets and arrived at the game early. Josiah sat comfortably in his seat.  There was no bouncing or frenzied activity. We fed him some cotton candy, though he didn’t seem too excited about that, and then some pizza. Josiah was so relaxed and contented it seemed obvious he must be meant to attend professional sporting events.

Truly, we figured this might be the ONE thing we could do together as a family.  That was somewhere around the 1st inning. By the beginning of the 3rd inning, Josiah had other plans. He jumped up out of his seat, crawled over me and then Rick and rapidly bolted up the center stairs to the top of the stadium. When he reached the wall behind the top row of seats, he came unglued.

I’m guessing he thought there would be an exit up there.  I tried to calmly explain we had to go down the steps to get out. Josiah wasn’t listening.  He was very quickly melting down. He began to scream.

Rick and I tried to pick him up.  We’ll just whisk this kid out of here we thought. That was nearly impossible. Josiah’s arms and legs were flailing.  He was frantic. I’m sure we were quite a sight for those sports fans who chose to sit in the nose bleed section with us.

When faced with challenging circumstances, the brain resorts to just about any solution.

Rick came up with this one.  I would grab Josiah’s arms.  He’d grab Josiah’s legs.  We’d hoist the boy up on the metal handrail, then slide him down the stairs. Even if that was a viable option, Josiah was so done with not being able to escape the stadium it would have been impossible to get a good grip on any of his limbs.

I’m not sure how we made it down those stairs but once Josiah saw the hallway, he dropped from my arms and started running.

I’ll spare all the details of how Rick tried to swap our tickets in for better seats, thinking Josiah would do like it if we were closer to the field, and of how he asked if we could just stay til the 5th inning because that’s when they gave out souvenir bats to the fans.  It’s all a blur quite honestly.

All I know is Josiah was DONE which meant we had to be too. Rick had to walk back to our seats to retrieve the things we had abandoned earlier.  I had to chase after Josiah who peeled away from me yet again. He found a door and bolted through.  It was only when he saw large concrete steps descending for many floors, that he stopped.

I stopped too. And then, Josiah pushed me down and attempted to climb on my back. He scrambled up it actually. This poor boy was so frightened, I gave in.

I let 72 pounds of wailing, shaking child ride piggy back down 3 flights of stairs supported only by my weak, equally shaky arthritic knees, only stopping long enough to apologize to those trying to get past us, every so often.