My husband rounds first base, pounding his cleats into that Yankee Stadium dirt, and I rise with the screaming crowd, electrified by hope. He sprints past second, spotlights shining on his third-base coach who waves him home, shouting even louder than the roaring fans, and my man thunders over the bag and charges for the plate fueled by a lifetime of childhood dreams – his grandfather’s whisper, “World Series champ,” hovers between his ears – when a ball fires in from left field, punches his shoulder blade, twisting his thick torso so he faces shortstop, where a second ball rockets at him, destroys his jaw, sprinkles his teeth into the chalk, and then the third ball, finally tracked down by the right fielder, guns in to shatter his blood-smeared cheek, pushing his nosebone into his brain and ending his life a foot from home. I rush the field and collapse on my husband. I hold him until the police pry me off.

Major League Baseball rescinds their three-balls-in-play policy the following morning. Fielders were confused and viewers traumatized. But as unfortunate as the evening was, my idea succeeded. The only way to increase plateaued baseball sales was to change the public’s perception of how many baseballs should be in-play at once. My boss agrees, but it’s grim optics for me to remain VP of sales at Rawlings, and so he lets me go with a generous severance and a referral to a contact at Volvo. He thinks I can pull them out of their slump by resetting customer perception about the number of vehicles a driver should be operating at the same time.

My gorgeous girlfriend is one of the boys. Not one of those girly-girls clucking about purses and pedicures, she can hang with my crew and debate the greatest heavy metal vocalists of all time, remember the highlights of the 2010 Super Bowl, put away blazing hot Carolina Reaper wings without a napkin; a natural beauty who’s not wasting hours putting on makeup, stunning in nothing but a Black Keys t-shirt. She’s not afraid to get her hands dirty with the power tools, and when she drills through the drywall and misses the stud, her mark off by half an inch, she slams her fist through the wall, slicing open her knuckle. When I ask her what’s wrong, she retreats to her office to watch half of one home improvement clip then seven hours of video podcasts about bodybuilding supplements. She opens the door and the sheet of printer paper wrapped around her hand is soaked through with brown blood and instead of seeking medical treatment, she explains to me the history of American gun laws. When I try to change the subject, she plows ahead as if I’m not there with detailed statistics on murder rates in different cities. My girlfriend has an encyclopedic knowledge of the weapons used by notorious serial killers. I ask her if she wants some help hanging up the autographed guitar, or if she wants to talk, and she tells me she’s driving three hours away to buy a rifle from a gun show that does not require background checks. She’d pass, of course, but she says it’s about the principle. She puts on her sneakers and her phone shows driving directions to the headquarters of Stanley, the company responsible for the tape measure she blames her error on. As she stomps to the garage muttering about vengeance and principles and individual rights, I can’t help but check out her cute butt in those all-American blue jeans, so thankful I found me a guy’s girl.