Waiting on a Baby or Please Allow Six to Eight Weeks for Delivery

I began Nobel Junior High in the fall of ’87 and a few things changed:  math got harder, girls stopped talking to me, and lunch went from 50 cents to $1.25.

I was a little upset that my grades went down, a lot upset that kickball skills no longer equaled popularity, and ecstatic that my allowance went up 75 cents a day.

I starved myself each day and went from being a baseball card collector to a baseball card investor.  Rookie cards were hot that year and I spent upwards of $6 a week on sets with Jose Canseco, Wally Joyner, Pete Incaviglia, and Bo Jackson.  I dreamed my collection was going to be worth six or eight figures by the time I went to college.

Toward the end of ’87, after reading baseball card magazines and pack inserts, I discovered a mail order set.  12 glossy cards, all rookies.  One dollar a set now, worth at least ten times that by next month.  Taking postage and handling into consideration, the sets were still cheaper if I ordered them through the mail.  I gave dad cash for a check of equal value and I ordered my first set.

These are the cards that came in every pack of ’87 Topps. Jake and I filled out tons of these cards, you needed six to order one set of glossy cards. The six to eight weeks delivery time is listed in the fine print.

I checked the mailbox that afternoon.  And again the next morning.  I checked the mail-order card, “Please allow six to eight week for delivery.”  Six to eight weeks!  The cards were all I could think about.  I dreamed about the glossy smooth coat, about Will Clark and Kevin Mitchell.  Rookies and rookies.

My school grades went even lower.  Girls continued to ignore me.  I raced home day after day to check the mail.  I held my breath as I opened the mailbox.  I opened my eyes.  Nothing.  Day after day.

I drew big ‘Xs’ on the calendar after each mail delivery, more certain each day that the cards would be delivered tomorrow and I would impress my brother and my friends and maybe even a girl or two with my glossy, valuable rookie cards.

As the six week mark came and went, I became disheartened.  My cards were surely lost in the mail.  Yet each day I checked, hoping against hope that they’d be delivered.  And each day I sighed at the injustice of life.

—

Just after Christmas 2011, my wife came to me as I was playing with our eight-month old on the floor.  She sat down next to me, giddy.  ‘Babe, there were two lines!’  I kissed her.  Pregnant again.  And I’ve been waiting the intervening nine months.  Six to eight weeks took forever when I was in seventh grade.  Waiting nine months now is unfathomable.  I’m convinced this baby is never coming.

—

Eight weeks and two days after I sent my order, dejected and sad and resigned that I would fail math, that no girl would ever talk to me, and that I would never be able to pay for college; I dragged myself to the mailbox.  I yanked it open.

And there it was.  A small box, addressed to me.  I gasped and leaped and squealed.  I tore the box open as I ran to the house, yelling, ‘They came, they came!’

They were gorgeous and clear, smelling of lacquer.  I slid them into my album and showed my whole family.  I took them to school and thought myself envied.  I raised my math grade to a ‘D’ and a girl sneezed in my general direction.  Life was right again.

—

Those same cards are sitting upstairs today.  In a box, next to tens of thousands of others.  The remnants of years of lunch money today are, collectively, almost worth three figures.

And each hour I ask my wife how she’s feeling, whether she wants to go to the hospital.  And forty weeks for a delivery is still unfathomable.

Soon and very soon.