Welcome to Chicago

I’m at the White Sox game and the girls three rows behind me are being crowded on either side by overly large White Sox fans.

‘No one's going to be sitting in these seats,’ I turn around and tell them, gesturing to all the empty seats around me. ‘I have the tickets for them in my pocket.’

They talk it out for a moment and then step down and sit, still leaving an empty seat between us.

This is all occurring during one of the many contests that go on during the breaks in action that allow for television commercials. They woman playing the contest wins thirty dollars worth of lottery tickets. The kid won a t-shirt the last contest. The guy before that won a tote bag.

‘Is it just me,’ I ask them, ‘or do these prizes really suck?’

One of the girls laughs, but her friend just leans in and says, very directly, ‘Why are you here alone?’

I toy briefly with the idea of coming up with something as desperate as the question deserves--My wife left me and took the kids? My parents and brother were killed in a car accident last month?--but instead I tell the simple truth.

‘I’ve just moved to Chicago and someone from work gave me the tickets,’ I say, ‘I called the three people I know in Chicago but none of them were available.’

They smile and ask me where I'm from and we get to talking.

‘Welcome to Chicago,’ they say at the end of the game, which the White Sox lost to Detroit. And I do, I do feel welcomed.

I have a good feeling about this…