Here's a school story that might be fresh.

As a kid, everybody played baseball except me and some kid who grew up to be a stoner and killed himself a few years ago. They were all in Little League. That's an organisation for children's baseball.

So in like...I'll say the third or fourth grade (no older than that) during recess, most of the kids would play a game where they bounced a ball off of a wall and the rules were otherwise the same as in baseball. So no bat but bouncing the ball off of the wall was like hitting the ball with the bat.

The kids would bring their baseball gloves to school so that they could play this game.

I didn't have a baseball glove. So I guess I asked my mother to buy one. She went to the local like pound shop equivelent and bought a toy baseball glove. Not a real one that children would use in games. It was plastic.

This story is hazy to begin with, so I apologise. First of all, why would I ask my mother to buy a glove? Why would I even want to play this game? The kids always played it but I remember playing it maybe once. I'm thinking that maybe I needed a glove for gym class. Maybe we were going to play some baseball-like game and we needed to bring in gloves. Maybe. Or maybe it was to play this schoolyard version that for some bizarre reason I suddenly wanted to play.

In any event, I was embarassed by the glove. I think that I was embarassed before I even brought it to school. Or possibly I brought it to school and they made fun of me for it. That definitely happened. When I brought it to school, they made fun of me because it was a toy baseball glove.

Anyway, that's not the main point of the story. Either before or after they made fun of me, I was embarassed by the glove and didn't want to bring it to school. But my mother told me that I had to. So I stuck it under my shirt on my back. Then my mother freaks out, "DON'T MAKE FUN OF PEOPLE WITH HUMPS ON THEIR BACK!"

How idiotic was this woman? Even as a kid, I was thinking, "What? No. That's not what I'm doing. I just don't want to bring this toy baseball glove with me. People with humps on their back? What? Where is she even seeing people with humps on their back?"

Anyway, I think I only brought this baseball glove to school once or at the most twice.

How much is an actual child's baseball glove? I don't know. Toys R Us has them for as little as $10. There's even a Hello Kitty one for $5 but I'm not sure how legit that is. Most of these look to about $25. It goes up to $80.

I guess $20 is a lot for something that your child isn't even going to use. I didn't play baseball. And there was no internet. And Toys R Us was way out there and my mother didn't drive. So she could only buy what was in town. And I guess they didn't sell legitimate baseball gloves. Just toy ones. And she probably didn't know what a real baseball glove was like since she's an immigrant and from a country where baseball isn't played.

But still. Nothing excuses that humpback comment. And I was so humiliated by that glove. How much is a toy baseball glove? Maybe $10. So same price as a low-end real one.

And thinking about it, we had a real baseball glove. It was just too big for me. I wonder why we had it. Must have been my father's. It was old. He must have played as a youth. It begs the question why I was never pushed into youth sports. He was just a lazy alcoholic, I guess.