Lucky Thursday Ticket

I went to the Golden Gloves last night to view the first set of final championship bouts.  Natalie, who has sparred at Loyola along with gym mate with Chloe, sang the National Anthem.  She's a trained opera singer, and she sounded fine. 

After changing my seat to distance myself from an annoying family group, I got down to paying attention to the matches.  Chloe fought, as did Ed Brown of Garfiled Park who beat our Ed Brown of Loyola Park during the preliminary bouts.  I was wondering how Brown pulled off his win.  He spent a whole lot of time waiting on his opponent, a guy named Johnson out of Chicago Boxing Club.  His fan club never stopped believin', however.  They yelled and screamed instructions to Brown the entire time.  Chloe went the distance in her fight, but ultimately lost on points.  She introduced me to her friends as her sparring buddy. 

Earlier in the day, I worked out for an hour and a half in the gym of Rogers Park Baptist Church.  The choir has a good boom box, and I kicked the volume up to ten to play my CDs.  Of course, I would have been scrambling to turn down the sound if Pastor Roger came in.  I'm sure the man would like to have worked upstairs in his office without hearing RUN DMC downstairs bellowing, "I'm the King of Rock/There is none higher/Sucker MCs should call me sire/I won't stop rockin' until I retire!"  It was a good workout.  I went upstairs to take a shower after I was done, and I had a strange thought:  "This is the first time I've been naked in church."  I remember reading the novel Fear of Flying by Erica Jong when I was in junior high or high school. . .I can't remember which.  If you are familiar with that novel, you know it's probably something that people under 18 years of age should not read.  There was a scene between the heroine and one of her boyfriends that had them alone in an empty synagogue. . . .you can probably guess what was up.  I've heard of folks engaging in similar activity in empty churches in real life.  Some people have no shame or fear of God apparently.

Throughout the boxing tournament, a 50/50 raffle has been running.  The objective is to raise money for youth boxing programs.  I played a couple of other times, but I wasn't successful until last night.  It was a little over $100, a nice piece of pocket money.  As I walked up the ring steps to claim my prize, a professional boxer named Angel was coming out from the ring.  He had just presented a trophy to the boxer who won the previous match.  I was a little unsteady, as I always seem to be on those type of steps, and he graciously helped me up.

Diego came over to shake my hand.  That's one kid that has great manners.  I guess he saw me sitting across the way.  He was there with his parents. 

I picked up the finals program, and Paul's fight was listed as a featured fight for tonight.  Tiffany, the 4"11 boxer who is going to try to get into the 2012 Summer Olympics, got a full page highlighting her accomplishments.  There are a couple of photos of Carlos in the program, as well.  One shows him watching as the boxer he fought against in the prelims is announced the winner.  The other shows him and Alan in the corner during one of the rest periods in that same fight.