A man sat watching Bruce, The Boss,

on T.V. and was escorted back years

ago, a seeming infinity ago, to a family

Christmas visit to the suburbs of the big

 

city in which he was raised but which

he had left, a seeming infinity ago, and

during which he took his two kids who

now live many states away and probably

 

wouldn’t even remember if the man asked

them about it in an e-mail, but certainly

not a text message because he doesn’t do

very well with that and his old flip-top

 

phone doesn’t help nor does he call much

anymore because more often than not, he

gets the message, “Hi, leave your name

and phone number and I will get back to

 

you as soon as I can,” the “can” being the

operative word there and the escape from

an obligatory return call. He leaves phone

calls up to them anymore. Anyway,

 

he took them to a CD shop, the species

of which is now a dinosaur in the mak-

ing, to look for the Bruce Springsteen

song “Born in the USA.” Then he sang

 

the lyrics, in his best Boss voice, to the

kids for the couple of miles, so many

years ago, back to their grandparents’

house where they fled the car for the

 

ubiquitous Christmas Carols his in-laws

played on their stereo. Then some sum-

mer, he sang those same lyrics as he,

from first base, tossed warm-up balls

 

to the third-baseman, short-stop and

second-baseman on the church soft-

ball team, a seeming infinity ago. Just

before the warm-up was over and the

 

game was about to begin, he switched

to “Glory Days – just thinkin’ ‘bout

those glory days,” and standing on that

baseball diamond, he remembered his

 

glory days, a seeming infinity ago,

until ever so many years later and not

so long ago, at a high school reunion,

he discovered that what Bruce sang

 

was right. In the cold, stark reality of

the now, those days, a seeming infinity

ago, weren’t all that glorious, after all.

But he still could get revved up sitting

 

in his easy chair listening to Bruce and

singing along while playing an air guitar

as his wife worked a crossword puzzle

and the dog moved to another room.