Last week, for "date night," GottaMan took me to an Angels game. Nothing says romance like getting together with 44,128 people with whom you'd very much rather have no contact; but hey, the seats were good! We mistakenly parked on the opposite side of the stadium from the seats, though, so once inside, we had to walk half the circumference of the rotunda to get to our seats.

I'm a SoCal girl born and reared, so while I'm not an overt fan of baseball, by default geography I tend to side with the Angels. However, as we wound our way through the throngs, I got a bit nervous. California is a land of transplants, and there was Boston Red Sox paraphernalia adorning A LOT of the folks we passed, and they looked quite zealous. I began to wonder how safe it would be to root, root, root for the home team.

As we neared our section, GottaMan asked me, "Would you like anything from the snack bar?" We stopped at the counter as another fan turned around with a serving of steaming nachos, dotted cheerfully with slices of pickled jalapeños. It spoke to me, somehow.

"Nachos, please," I said.

"That's what I was thinking," said GottaMan. "It looked good, didn't it?"

Armed with the souvenir gallon-sized beverage and two boxes of slithery, oozing snackage, we made our way to our seats. It was a slice of Americana: thousands of people noshing on stadium food, waiting for a baseball game on a perfect summer night. We sat down and dug into our nachos. The only time I want jalapeños is in conjunction with canned processed liquid cheese product and overly-manufactured tortilla chips. But in that circumstance, I want one with every bite!

A thought belatedly occurred to me about halfway through my portion: "There's no food in this food." The next thought, which would have been more helpful if it had asserted itself as the first thought, was "I'm probably going to pay for this." These thoughts, however, did nothing to dissuade me from finishing most of my pile of pending purgatory. I even stole a few of GottaMan's jalapeños when mine ran out.

Sure enough, around the bottom of the sixth inning, my intestines had tested the nachos and found them wanting. Meaning my intestines didn't want them around any longer than necessary. Meaning it became necessary to unburden said intestines of their unwelcome guests. By then, frankly, I was ready for a break, since more than half the crowd appeared to be rooting for Boston and there was some tension in the air, if not downright hostility. I was glad for an excuse to escape to the relative quiet of the restroom.

The bathroom was nearly empty when I went in. I selected a stall roughly in the middle of the long row. It had been a while since my last Angels game, but I remembered that you could always hear the announcer from the loudspeaker: "Now batting...g...g... Third baseman...n...n..." But tonight, as I sat down, I noticed something different: they were piping Angels Radio [1] into the women's bathroom! The men's room I could understand, but it surprised me that they'd put speakers in the women's room; I guess I'm sexist about baseball fans. Still, now a pooping fan of either sex would never have to worry about missing a moment of the action from the game.

Not being a consummate fan myself, though, I tuned out the color announcers and settled to the business of re-processing my nachos. I was enjoying the respite from the crowd noise and the angst between the Angels fans and the Red Sox fans -- but the relief didn't last long. I had gotten up in the bottom of the sixth, and I guess a lot of other women decided to get to the bathroom before the rush during the seventh inning stretch, because the stalls on either side of me were quickly filled.

I have mentioned before on this site that it generally takes me ten minutes or so to perform that certain duty. This night was no exception, although my chore was compounded somewhat by the questionable ingredient list that had made up my supper. So I was concentrating, (and, I admit, daydreaming a little), not paying much attention to what was going on around me, until I became aware of the strange sounds emanating from the stalls on either side of me.

I'm not one to interfere or interact with other bathroom users, so it was a few minutes before I became curious about the awwwwws and the ooooohs, respectively, coming from either side of me. Good grief! Had boththese women eating something that didn't agree with them? Oh, no! What if it was the nachos?!?

I mentally took stock of how my tummy was feeling. It felt all right, actually; other than my intestines insisting on jettisoning the jalapeños, I felt pretty good. But something was clearly wrong with those two women. I sat still and listened. There it was again: a high-pitched "Ohhhhh!" and a nearly simultaneous "Ahhhhh!" in almost a growl.

I began to get rather concerned, and not only for them. What if was I next? A bit worried, I finished up what I was doing and prepared to exit the stall. It was then that I heard the color announcer boom out, "A long fly ball by Izturis... OVER the right field wall... HOME RUN!!!" This was accompanied by the roar of the crowd (half in cheer, half in jeer), and punctuated by a startling "Aaaaargh!" from the stall on my left and "Yeaaaaaah!" from the stall on my right.

And then I understood. Clearly those two women are bigger baseball fans than am I.