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Welcome to the thoughts, actions and the all-around happenings in a day in the life of Jim Lawson

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Location: Springfield, VA

Thursday, May 22, 2008



It’s softball season again and after a few rainouts, tonight we play our first two games of the season. Let share with you a little of my softball background. A few years ago, while I worked at The Tech Council of Maryland, the staff decided to man a softball team in a coed league. Everyone thought it was a good idea to play as a team and we all had the attitude that it really doesn’t matter who wins, as long as you’re having a good time.

When we had our first practice I quickly realized that the majority of our team had never played softball before, much less played on a team. That was still fine, remember it’s not if you win or lose.

By the time we played our first game we had a pretty goods idea how the season was going to turn out. Now most of our games were double-headers so the evenings were long commitments. T the end of the first game the score was something like 46 to 1 with us being on the short end. Losing by 45 runs isn’t a great incentive to rally thee team for the second game of a double-header.

As the season went on (a total of 18 games) some members of the team started to drop by the old water hole before and after the games. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with a bit of imbibing but showing up to the games three sheets to the wind made it pretty difficult to win a game much less getting through a game with someone on the team challenging the opposition to a fight. You can imagine how hard it was to get excited for the trouncing were getting every game.

It got so bad that we had a hard time fielding a team each night. Since it was a coed league we had to have at least five women and five men on the field. Fortunately for us we hired a 19 year-old intern who helped us to field the team. She was on the field on her first day of work; we had to stop at Target to buy her clothes and shoes to wear.

It was the last game of the season and we were 0-17. We had a chance; we were up by two runs in the bottom of the last inning. The other team knew that we had never had a win and we knew it was finally going to happen, you could feel it in the air, victory was within our reach. Until those son-of-a-bitches scored three runs off of us and that’s the way we finished the season, 0-18.

Fast forward to my church’s team. Grace Presbyterian has had a softball team for as long as I can remember. I’ve always wanted to play on the team but doing theater all of those years kept me off the field and on the boards. Last year I finally got a chance to play on the Grace team. It was halfway through the season and the team was still accepting anyone who wanted to play. The league is a men’s league and apparently Grace has been a dominating force in the league for quite some while.

Halfway through my first game with the team the manager put me in as a designated hitter. The team had never seen me take a swing or even played the field. The first pitch I drove a line drive down the left field line and took it in for a double. The next time up was a single and then the last at-bat for me was another double. I was finally having fun playing softball.

The 2007 Grace team went on to have a perfect season with no losses and we ended up winning the tournament as well. Tonight starts a new season and the slate is clean. Who knows what kind of season we have? What I do know is that we have some pretty good ballplayers on our teams and I’m proud to play a few innings with them now and ten.

If you’re in the Springfield area tonight near Wakefield Park feel free to drop by the games, 8:40 & 9:50 at field 4. Play ball!

Thursday, May 08, 2008

A Proud Dad!


I know I’m just sounding like a proud father but that’s exactly what I am. Two wonderful things are happening with my girls, Dani is finishing her first year at college and Barbara has decided to come home to be with me and Dani.

First, let me start with Dani. Dani has fought a few hurdles over he last 19 years of her life. There were points where she (and Mary & I) were so frustrated over school work that I thought it would be a struggle for her to just graduate high school. Dani has always been someone who doesn’t give up If she was having as problem learning or understanding something in school she would work as hard as she could to find other ways to understand it. By the time she was in the eighth grade things started to click and by the end of her senior year she graduated high school with an advanced diploma. There are many young people who do that but what impresses me so much about Dani is the obstacles she had to overcome to get to that place.

So, let me get back to finishing her first year at college. Dani is attending Shenandoah University in Winchester, VA. Shenandoah still has the conservatory but it is now part of the university. Her mother, Mary, went to the conservatory for a while and her Aunt Linda graduated from there. Dani is majoring in elementary education and minoring in dance. Dani’s roommate, Rebekah, is a great young woman who is majoring in nursing and she and Dani get along fantastically. Rebekah is from Ohio, about 9 hours away from school, so she has come home with Dani and stayed with us a few times. It’s been a pleasure having her with us.

It makes Mary and I so proud to see Dani thriving in a university setting. She’s doing well in school and her grades are something for her to be proud of.

Mary (my ex-wife) and her husband decided to move to Florida last year and with that move came some tough decisions. Dani has always lived with me at our home and Barbara has been with both of us and most recently going to school where Mary lives and being with me on the weekends, holidays, summer and any other times that she didn’t have school. Barbara decided that she would try going to school in Florida. Mary picked out a great private school (I’ve been there and it’s a very nice Christian school). Barbara has come back for all of the holidays and about a weekend a month.

After the Christmas break, she gave me a call and said that she had made a decision, she was coming back home. We had a long serious talk about it and then Mary and I had a good conversation and it was decided that she would be back here. Of course, she’ll be down to see Mary on holidays, and anytime she wants to see her. Who knows if this will be a permanent decision for her but for right now this is what she wants. Mary and I will revisit it at the appropriate times. It was extremely tough to see her go to Florida and I know it will be just as tough for Mary to see her come back to Virginia.

Maybe this post has gotten a little too personal but as you can see, I am a pretty happy dad. Now, can anyone help out with tuitions?


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