Twin Babies In Boxes  I'm back at Armstrong High School for a basketball featuring Armstrong versus Rival High School. It's winter, and I'm in the northeast parking lot. I have driven there with my parents. We have twin babies with us. They are in shoeboxes in the vehicle, which may be a mini-van. My dad wants to check the twin's diapers to see if they urinated before we go into the game. I start to do this, but it is bitter cold: windy and well below zero. There is a sheet of paper on top of the first box. As I start to remove the paper I say to my dad that maybe we should do this inside, out of the cold. He agrees. I carry the twins in. I think one is male and one is female. I go in the athletic doors. The woman selling tickets is my neighbor Wanda Stalk, or my aunt Sheila Redding. I ask her if she has sold a lot of tickets. She hasn't, I think. I tell her we sold a lot of tickets last night. By that I mean we sold a lot of cups for beer at our house party. My uncle Rusty Redding is there smoking a cigarette. I give my dad the babies, which are now each in a tennis shoe. They are small. I can't see them when I look into the shoe, but can only see the clothes surrounding them. I pay the woman with a $5 bill. She gives me $2 in change. I hear the buzzer: the game has started. I'm wearing either snow boots or roller blades. I run into the gymnasium, going down the hall past the maintenance area. The hallway opens up into the gymnasium after a quick left turn. As I enter one team shoots a three-pointer from what would be out-of-bounds, on the other side of the backboard. It goes in and is counted. There is a large space of about 30 feet between the bleachers and the court. I sit by myself on the second row of the "student" section. I see my cousins Rich, Melvin, and Melissa Redding. Armstrong does well. My old neighbor Tim Robbins and another kid yell at me to come sit with them up near the top of the bleachers. I do this, though I'd rather sit by myself. Next to us are two guys doing the Rocker High School basketball radio show. Armstrong does well, and we cheer. Several parents who seem to be from Rival High School look up at us with disdain. They frown on us and look down upon us, maybe because we vocally support the team. Two of them are my old teammate's father, Todd Kecker, and a person from Rival High School, Alex Zadra. I go down and sit right next to them: in the middle of them. I ask them why they're being so belligerent. I sit and talk with them, calmly. They don't want me there. The two people are not Todd and Alex, but two men I don't know. The game we're watching is a junior varsity game between Rapidville and Holy High School, but it seems one game is Armstrong versus Rival. These players are not varsity caliber. I'm confused as to who is who, and which team is which, because I don't recognize anyone. I don't know who to cheer for. My high school friend Sam Kingsley and his old girlfriend Janelle West are there. Sam is a sitting a few rows down from me. He says hi. I feel dumb, as if I had been ignoring him, which I hadn't been: I just didn't know he was there. Had I known, I would have liked to ignore him. I say hi and we talk. He is in school in Metropolis, but not at the community college because they didn't give him enough financial aid. He attends a different school named Boris. He says it's going okay. I tell him to give me his phone number. I express happiness when he tells me his classes are going well, and this surprises him, because he thinks I wouldn't care.