Some Common Phrases GIF-ustrated: Pence-ive

Hunter Pence has just struck out. Now, he is quietly thinking as he half-watches his teammate Brandon Crawford strikeout.

He is not thinking about his recent strikeout. He is not thinking about Brandon Crawford striking out or Brandon Crawford or Brandon Crawford’s hair. He is not thinking about baseball at all, or anyone associated with baseball.

What is he thinking about?

Hunter Pence is not thinking about food; he almost never thinks about food. He is not thinking about amphetamines. He is not thinking about applying for a new job — his résumé is atrocious and he hates writing cover letters. He is not thinking about how he can make his relationship with his girlfriend more unique — though that is a good guess because he thinks about that a lot, keeps little scraps of paper in his wallet upon which he’s scribbled down ideas for said.

What is he thinking about?

Another pretty good guess would be that he’s thinking about a young woman he knew in college who slept next to him in his dormroom bed once, in her just underwear and a t-shirt, but never even kissed him — how he liked that, felt okay with that, felt positive about the future after that. But actually, Hunter Pence is not thinking about that, about what that young woman is doing now, if she is well.

What is he thinking about, then?

Hunter Pence was not just thinking about a dinosaur farting, what it would take for a big ball of dino-gas to get from the intestines to the stinky dino-hole; whether, when released, that dino-gas might kill the swarm of flies that congregate around the dino-hole.

No, Hunter Pence was just thinking of this one time when he was a kid, maybe he was eight or nine, he couldn’t sleep so he wandered downstairs from his bedroom, out onto the front porch. There was a dim light from the road and the moonlight, too. On the front lawn, there was a rabbit, just a regular rabbit, full grown and drab brown, just sitting there. It didn’t move, but Hunter could see it was breathing, sniffing, blinking. Hunter didn’t move either. He sat there and sat there and didn’t move and the rabbit didn’t hop away. He must have eventually fallen asleep; the rabbit wasn’t there when he woke up to the sunrise. Hunter was thinking about how the rabbit would be dead, now, and how someday he would be dead, too. And then no one would ever think about that moment ever again.

That’s what Hunter Pence was thinking about right now.