Adam Driver and the Mather High School 16-Inch Softball Squad/The Dreamweaver

I was sent back to high school in Chicago to finish my last six credits and was put in a gym class where they were playing 16-inch softball for the whole semester.

The head coach was cranky African-American man/woman hybrid, and Adam Driver was the assistant coach.

At the beginning of the class, Driver was demonstrating some basketball techniques while shooting hoops in jeans, loafers, and a white button-down Oxford cloth shirt.

At one point, I approached Driver and introduced myself and he said, “Oh, you’re the guy with the book about me and the haircut.”

When it came time to start playing softball, I was told I was going to be the catcher and was given an old worn out catcher’s mitt.

I went up to Driver and said “I’ve been playing 16-inch softball my whole life so would it be okay if I just didn’t wear the glove?” He looked at me and said I’d have to take it up with the coach.

I walked over to the coach who said “Absolutely not. Everybody wears a glove.”

I told him I’d been playing 16-inch softball for more than fifty years and he replied something about that he’d been doing something or another for fifty years so I could wear the glove. He then handed me a bat and told me to go take a batting practice.

I was looking around at the equipment and noticed how all the gear was brand new, but the bat the coach handed me had already been through the ringer. It was scuffed and somebody had drilled a screw into it and there were shards of glass stuck in the wood.

I brought the damaged bat to the coach’s attention. He looked the bat over and said that I should take it across the street to Howerd’s and he gave me a business card and I thought it was strange that Howerd’s was spelled with an e instead of an a.

I went across the street to Howerd’s which was just opposite of Wolfy’s Hot Dogs and when I walked into the office, I presumed it was Howerd himself on the phone as no one else seemed to be in the office and that this Howerd was probably a second or third generation Howerd who owned this sporting goods business.

Howerd was on a telephone call but took out a handmade wooden tool of some type and extracted the screw from the bat. Then, without even shifting his eyes from the note pad he was writing on while still on the phone call, took another one of these odd tools and drove the shards of glass out. I thanked him and he waved without even looking my way.

I went back to the gym and Adam Driver came up to me and said he had some bad news, that it turned out there had been an administrative error and instead of having to stay at the high school for 16 days to make up my six credits, I would have to stay there for the entire 16-week semester and agreed to make the best of it.

Driver looked at me and smiled and told me to  go and I fall in with the other students and to show them how softball is played.

Then I woke up.