Looking back, I must admit I wouldn't have missed all those years of "us and them," of always being the Indian when we played cowboys and Indians, of hearing how jealous they were of us, when they had the good eyes and the obviously better connections. And the continuing insistence on Jewish girls -- what did it get me besides a Jewish girl? Meanwhile, she slips off to a cozy San Jose residential home and takes the Body and Blood first chance she gets. I can't help but wonder what I might have been without the blizzard of clippings sent to me away at school whenever Jews were discovered in China or Ceylon, without Hebrew school when I could have been working on my pivot at second base, and with all the Catholic girls I would have met had she started taking the Host back then -- church socials, box lunches in the guild hall, pancake breakfasts filled with them, instead of having to sneak around to CYO dances at St. Theresa's and Holy Angels and trying to drive past the nuns standing under the backboards for a layup (although Catholic girls seemed to like Jewish guys, I think because our guilt came in different places).

Sure, as Catholics we still would have had the Lutherans to deal with, but the odds would have been better, not to mention a galaxy of great ballplayers to look up to, not just Koufax, a Catholic in the White House, and a mind-boggling selection of Irish, Italian, Polish and Serbian girls (although Sandy Chavez probably still wouldn't have gone out with me), each stopping at a different station of the cross. I might have been sentenced to Catholic schools brimming with humorous annecdotal material, restrictions to rebel against, demon nuns, lifelong camaraderie, and, yes, girls in plaid skirts and blazers, reflective shoes or not.

But, T.S. Eliot went over late in life, and so did mother -- just to be socialble, really, and because the boys who come over with the guitars on Sunday are so cute. Like their mothers, I might add, way back when.