I have been to one Father’s Day game in my life.

My memory lies, it turns out. The game in question was definitely against the Padres, and it was on Father’s Day, 2005. However, I thought I remembered Johan getting ejected early in the game, allowing Jake Peavy to cruise to an easy win. However, Peavy didn’t even pitch, while Darrell May cruised to a win. Johan gave up one run in the sixth, then a bases-clearing double with two outs in the seventh that got him pulled. The Padres went on to win, 5-1, and who has two thumbs and didn’t see a Johan Santana win in person in Minnesota, ever? THIS guy! (I did, however, attend this game at Safeco, where two guys behind me were bemoaning the fact that they were “getting shut down by a no-name pitcher.” A writer in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer essentially repeated that statement the next day, displaying an utter lack of respect for his own work).

As for that Padres game, I was to go with a nine-month-old Skim as well as the Milkmaid. It was Father’s Day, Johan was pitching, we all had the day free and I hadn’t yet started running Spookymilk Survivor so my schedule didn’t revolve around it. However, the Milkmaid ended up being called in to work by her ruthless douchebag bosses, who told her Father’s Day wasn’t an important enough holiday for her to miss and they needed to add her to the schedule (I was not consulted for comment on their opinion). I watched the game with Skim and folks around us marveled at how quiet she was – a trend that she continued all throughout early childhood, where people would get up after dinner or event and remark that they had no idea they were sitting near a child.

The game sucked, though, and it was rainy afterward. And, me being me, I couldn’t remember where the f*&^ I had parked. I knew it was in one of the ramps, but I hadn’t written it down, since at 27 years old I was still trusting my never-good sense of direction and memory for landmarks. I walked around with Skim, who barely complained despite the light rain. Once the rain cleared, it got hot. Brutally hot. She still didn’t complain but I felt like a heel. She fell asleep in the Baby Bjorn as I spent over two hours combing a four-block area (this is who I am) looking for my car. Finally, I found it in the first parking garage I’d searched, on a floor I’d walked at least twice. I laughed at my own uselessness in the arena of finding things and we drove home.

The Milkmaid, for her part, had only been on at work for two hours. They cut her when the rush died down, a further insult to our day. She asked if the game had gone ridiculously long. It was a rather short one, at 2:23, so I amused her with the postgame story. If she’d been with us, there would have been no problem. The way I remember the spelling of words and names is the way she remembers directions and landmarks.

I don’t know how the rest of the day went, but as stupid as everything was, it remains my strangest Father’s Day, and it was also my first.