When I was a kid (you know you're getting older when people no longer giggle when you say "when I was a kid" like they did when you were ten)...

Okay...let's start over...it would have been too confusing to start a sentence, go for a joke, then continue the sentence, so we're just starting over.

Pretend this is the top of the page. :)

When I was a kid, my family lived in Elgin, Illinois. Elgin is about 25 miles southwest of Chicago. One of my favourite past times was running around in the back yard, swinging on a great swing that was connected to a really great tree, and playing with Quincy (the golden Lab next door) who was separated from me by only a red picket fence. I don't know how, but it always felt like when I was running around the back yard, there was ALWAYS a Cubs game on. ALWAYS.

Up until a month ago, I always thought the line in "Take me out to the ball game" was "Well, it's root, root, root for the Cubbies..." because that's how it is for Chicago fans. I never questioned what was said if someone wasn't a Cubs fan, because I don't think I ever grew up knowing anyone who wasn't. Someone was singing that song at work last month and when they sang "...root, root, root for the home team..." I looked at them as if they had just removed their head and tucked it away under their arm like a basketball. After a very lengthy discussion (which mostly consisted of this guy and I saying "No, you're wrong, you weirdo" "No, *you're* wrong, you freak of nature" "You're stupid" "No, *you're* stupid"), it turns out that *I* was the stupid freak of nature who was wrong.

Anyway, my point for all of this insane rambling is to tell you that I'm bummed that the Cubs were knocked out of the post season last night. How cool would it be to see the Cubs win the World Series? That's something that not even my grandparents have seen! And if they had made it to the World Series this year, it would be the first time that I had seen that. The cool thing would be that it would also have been the first time that my parents had seen it! I just realized that the Cubs are jinxed when it comes to post season games. I wonder why Cubs fans are so loyal. I've never honestly been attracted to any other team in baseball. Of course, baseball players as a whole pissed me off last year (and in 1994), so I'm not exactly rushing out to buy tickets to ANY game, but I would totally love to see the Cubs get the title back. I'm thinking 2008 will be our year. Apparently we're allowed to take the title once every century.

In a way, I'm thinking that the Cubs got knocked out at EXACTLY the right time. They got stopped at the LAST game before the World Series. If they had gone on to the World Series, Chicago would have fallen. Think about it. Sports fans, for whatever reason, riot when their team wins major titles. On the other hand, if they had gotten there and lost, Cubs fans would have been so pissed that they would have rioted. This way, the Cubs show everyone that they're not a team to be written off AND Chicago remains standing.

Everyone wins.