My legs have seriously been eaten alive. Despite the fact that tomorrow is the first day of fall, the mosquitos hover and infest the baseball diamond as if they knew we'd return every week. I'm not even going to begin to count how many bites I have. All I know is every time I looked down at my legs while playing center field, I saw 8-10 mosquitos circling each ankle. When faced with a 20-1 ratio, I cannot win.

I braved the mosquitos and the fly balls to right/right center. Note to Britt and Chad: When we only have six on our team, and most of the balls are hit into the outfield, we need three outfielders. Nobody ever pulls the ball to right, so perhaps we can deal with two outfielders, if we have them in different positions. And since nearly every ball went to center or right, I was doing double duty. I was exhausted after every inning, diving and running for balls hit to right from my position in center.

Also, and while expected, there were no lefty mitts. Fortunately, Anita's beau had one, but of the twelve or so playing, we had three lefties and one mitt. Two is unpresidented, but three? So he and I were purposely picked for different teams so that we could hand the mitt to each other between innings.

More and more of the old school crew are coming back. As I've said before, the Britt and the crew crew has morphed into something else after high school. Of the eight or nine of us that ate lunch together everyday for three years, only four of us had stuck together to this point. With David's return, and the shocking invite and return of Sariah today, we now had six of the eight of us together. That alone rocked. Of the two (or three) we are missing, one is married with a child, one is his younger brother and is only part of the crew by association, and the third is T.E.N.T., who was mentioned by Sariah in passing today.

Here's where this entry takes a bit of a turn.

Britt, Sariah, and I were on the same team. Sariah asked Britt if she's heard from T.E.N.T. lately. Britt answers no, and figures she's up to her own thing. After all, she's at BYU, and we haven't been close with her in exactly three years.

Sariah began telling us that her sister (her true sister. One of about four) is in her college class. She said she asked about her, and she said she was fine.

I just shook my head and resisted the urge to say something. After all, I know how close she and Sariah were. And the last thing I wanted to do was not only explain in detail exactly what went on in the Jason/T.E.N.T. saga, but also why she's affected me lately, and why I need to desparately tell her exactly what I need to tell her to perhaps move on past her.

I have a ton of people I can contact T.E.N.T. through. That isn't a problem. I'm friends with her whole family. The problem is that meeting that we're going to have someday. I haven't seen her in 2 1/2 years. I hope she's not the same. If she is, this meeting will seriously be over before it starts. She has to be able to handle what I need to tell her. You'd think that having just turned 20, having lived much of her life with nine other people and having lived on her own at a boarding school between the age of 16 and 18 would make her more social and mature. But she's who she is, and whatever is bothering me with her will need to come out to her for me to move on. An she needs to hear it.

Funny how, "Have you talked to T.E.N.T.?"

"No. Not forever."

"Her sister's in my institute class." can turn into an entry that overshadows an evening of softball.

I think after my discussion with Britt about her on this night changed her thoughts about her. She took what I said to heart and realized that maybe she, like everyone else was sucked into her facade. Why else would Britt, when the idea of a full crew reunion came up and just seconds after saying she hadn't spoke to T.E.N.T. for more than a year say, "I only keep in contact with the people I want to keep in contact with."

With that statement, I think Britt, days after her 20th birthday, has finally matured in a new way. She's seeing it how I saw it, and she's willing to do whatever it takes to get that meeting with T.E.N.T. to resolve things.

Britt rocks. She so deserves more from me than a "happy birthday." She's getting a gift, or at least a card.

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