More Than a Day at the Races

We were running late. 

The traffic from JFK was solid the whole way. Before getting to Belmont we had to find a Howard Johnsons in Queens, which housed our tickets.  But these golden tickets only got us through the front door, if we could reach it. 

Stewing in the back of a steamy cab we dug into the racing sheets.

“Hey dad, look, there’s a horse in the next race from Maryland,” he said.

“That’s a sign,” I told him.

I had prepared a day of teaching my son how to handicap based on facts, but it turned into a day of patience, luck, intuition and inevitably betting on losers.

Seven minutes to post time.

Looking out the cab window nothing but cars and people, the grandstand half a mile ahead on the other side of the track. 

“And look at this,” he said, “the horse’s name is Ben’s Cat.”

The blood drained from my face.  My hands sweaty. 

My son has a friend named Ben Catt.

“That’s our horse.”

We leapt from the car and ran.  Past the people in pastels, the broken bourbon bottles and cigar butts. 

“Dad, you run ahead, I can’t bet anyways.”

I pulled out my phone and with three minutes to go I could see the security team waving their wands over every whale belt, horse pin, and powder green hat.

My son and I had made a deal, we’d bet every race, ten bucks a horse.

“You need limits,” I told him.  “Never dig into your pocket for more money.”

I pull out the cash, sprint up the escalator to the window where I place my bet with a minute to post time, as Josh falls in behind me, the winning ticket in my hand.

“Did you bet the ten bucks?” he asked.

“I bet the whole thing,” I said, doing the calculations on what it would mean to our $100 if he won.

We settled in the back, and they were off.  

“So how much do we win?” he asked after the horses crossed the finish line.

“For coming in fourth?  Not much,” I told him.

Facebook is awash in endings, graduations, leaving home.  I don’t care what Webster says about commencements, they are not beginnings. For parents they are only endings.

But when our oldest was born we won the birthday lotto as the calendar gods made him miss the Kindergarten deadline.  So while many of his friends are high school graduates heading off to beach week, he is just a rising senior.

Under the gauze of his final year in our house, lots of things become "once in a lifetime" opportunities, including the possibility of a triple crown winner.

So we flew to New York, and managed the traffic and ran to the race and placed the bets, and survived the disappointing horses.  We cheered our hearts out for Chromey, as the locals call her. 

And we got stuck on the train platform for three hours and missed our flight home and made friends with some Arkansans and walked through Manhattan until we found a place to eat and watch the end of the Rangers game deep into double overtime.  And the next morning we were back at the airport and then home again 24 hours after we placed our initial bet on Ben’s Cat. 

We were wrong about the horses.  But right about the opportunity.