"How're the Dodgers doing?" I ask my walking friend, he who worked on Air Force One for Reagan; he's wearing his usual tank top with a small cross hanging around his neck. "Oh, they're under .500. I know it's juvenile, but I take it personally when they lose." So I tell him about my very Catholic former colleague who revered the Notre Dame football team. In a conversation in our faculty lounge (back when we talked to each other in the lounge), he remarked that he cared less than he used to when they lost. Another colleague, a former nun, turned and said, in her formal English, "I should think that was a sign of maturity."
Dan of tank top and cross tells me the following story in return: he was at Fenway Park. It was after 9/11 when they got stuck in Boston and the military sent them to the park to see a game. Behind him a woman was screaming; she was cursed loudly, uttered racial epitaphs [sic], abusing the first baseman, who was just up from Pawtucket. Dan was embarrassed to turn and look at her. When he did--finally--he saw that the woman was wearing a habit, a big cross around her neck. "She was a NUN."
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