Fear the Bean (One Sixty-Two: Day 133)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day One Hundred Thirty-Three: Leo Nunez, Florida Marlins

I thought I was helping Katie work on her reading skills while also bonding with her a bit. Little did I know that I was sparking extreme fears of ingested toxins.

The book is titled George’s Marvelous Medicine, and it was written in 1981 by Roald Dahl. Katie and I have read several of Dahl’s books together, from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Fantastic Mr. Fox to Esio Trot. Katie typically gets a charge out of Dahl’s dark, sly humor, so much that she often wants to read his stories past her bedtime. But something different happened after I read George’s Marvelous Medicine with Katie, and it took awhile to reveal itself. She seemed amused and captivated by young George’s attempts to quiet his super-cranky grandma with a potion made from just about every household fluid he could get his hands on. But in the days that followed our book-reading, Katie began wondering to herself just how many things around her are as toxic as George’s medicine turned out to be. And that’s when this 8-year-old started to panic.

That leads us to a few nights ago, when we had a crisis over ice cream. It was a delicious bowl of Breyers vanilla, with orange sprinkles on top. It was waiting for Katie to eat it, but Katie was crying in the living room. You see, while spooning her sprinkles onto the ice cream, Katie had noticed several black dots in the vanilla. She had started wondering if these dots were toxic objects floating around in her creamy dessert. The tears began to flow, and she said she couldn’t eat it.

As Daddy swept in to try and help, he took a look at the bowl, then at the container. I brought Katie over to the Breyers box and showed her the words in bright orange print on the black container: “Now 33% more real Vanilla Bean!” I showed Katie that these little black dots were actually flavorful vanilla beans, and they weren’t the slightest bit toxic. In fact, there were 33 percent more of them than in year past. Thus, more black dots.

Katie still hesitated, so I told her that if she sat down and ate this ice cream, I’d list all of the toxic things she needed to avoid. She seemed content with that, so we had a deal. As she savored the vanilla bean and orange sprinkles, I gave her a quick list: One, don’t drink any of the cleaners we keep beneath the kitchen sink; two, don’t start eating random mushrooms off the ground in a forest; three, don’t sink your teeth into any raw meat; and four, stay away from bottles of medicine.

Once she realized that she knew all of that stuff already, Katie was relieved. The fear eased out of her face, and she was able to enjoy the rest of her dessert. I felt a bit exhausted, but I was reminded of my own, random childhood fears from years ago: My worries that the bedroom closet would light up in flames while I slept, or the chills I felt throughout my nervous system whenever I heard Blondie’s hard-hitting song “Call Me” when I tried going to sleep with the radio on. They were random fears, and quite funny in retrospect. But growing up is hard stuff, and anxieties sort of come with the territory.

As we grow, the anxieties take on a different shape, but they remain nonetheless. In Miami, the Florida Marlins have a closer named Leo Nunez, who is struggling right now. There have been some blown saves of late, and some games in which Nunez has been rather toxic on the pitching mound. But rather than dread his own demise, Nunez must do what Katie had to do: Take a deep breath, realize it’s going to be OK, and settle down. As we grow up, we realize that just when things seem to be at their worst, there’s often some ice cream with sprinkles just around the corner. With 33 percent more vanilla bean.