Thoughts elsewhere during baseball...

On Tues. I went to a baseball game since my one lawyer friend from Missouri had gotten free tickets from her a boss, a judge.

The team lost as always, but watching the people in the bleachers was funny.  When the other team got a homerun that went into the bleachers, drunk fans got the ball and threw it back onto the field and cheered, like, "We don't want any of that!".

At some point in the game something was happening, though, and my one friend from Buffalo (who also came along on a free ticket) asked me what happened, but I had to tell her I wasn't watching the game, I was actually thinking of Ovid...

You see, for my one Latin student who's an administrative assistant at school and is finishing up an intro textbook and wants to read Classical poetry, I had been scanning through Ovid's "Art of Love" to see its difficulty level, and I was quite taken by many sections, including the introduction (so much better in Latin!) -

Should anyone here not know the art of love,
read this, and learn by reading how to love.
By art the boat’s set gliding, with oar and sail,
by art the chariot’s swift: love’s ruled by art.
Automedon was skilled with Achilles’s chariot reins,
Tiphys in Thessaly was steersman of the Argo,
Venus appointed me as guide to gentle Love:
I’ll be known as Love’s Tiphys, and Automedon.
It’s true Love’s wild, and one who often flouts me:
but he’s a child of tender years, fit to be ruled...

A little ways later, though, comes advice to men on how to find a lover:

But hunt for them, especially, at the tiered theatre:
that place is the most fruitful for your needs.
There you’ll find one to love, or one you can play with,
one to be with just once, or one you might wish to keep...

I kept thinking that, people watching at the baseball game, looking at people in the seats curving out on both sides of me!  Ovid knew what the f*ck he was talking about.