Dave Krueger and I headed for our favorite tennis courts (in Racine’s Island Park) only to find that they were all occupied by one of the high school teams in town. (The Nerve!) So we headed to our second favorite courts, and they were being painted. (They will be a bright, beautiful blue once they’re finished.) Plan C might have been Humboldt Park, where we’ve played before, but we opted instead for the courts that are just south of the Racine Zoo, because we had never played there before and it sounded like fun. We got there and found the courts to be completely empty of high school teams or painters – and moreover we were right beside Lake Michigan, which was cool in more ways than one.
But then we actually stepped on to the courts and found to our amazement that they weren’t the standard cement courts that everyone is used to playing on. . . but instead were made of a very very hard and evidently very durable plastic – and not solid plastic but rather a tight and intricate grid laid down in small squares, through which you could actually see the ground beneath. It seemed like something straight out of an episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. . . especially when the balls would bounce with this weird, tremulous sort of sound that sounded a little like a bad tuning fork. There were good things about it like an absence of cracks and the surface was perfectly even- and the painted lines were much clearer and crisper than on the older courts.
But then we started playing, and that’s when everything fell apart for me. . . It felt for all the world like the tread of my new cross-training shoes were digging right into the openings of the surface and making me feel almost stuck in place. Dave had the same sensation, except that his track shoes are over twenty-five years old (believe it or not) so the tread isn’t quite so pronounced. . . and besides, he is so quick on his feet that a slight problem with footing just makes him seem a little more human and a little less like Speedy Gonzales. I, on the other hand, am such a klutz to begin with – not exactly light on my feet – and once you stir into the mix this strange plastic court and the tendency for my shoes’ tread to adhere to its many crevices and I might as well have been an octogenarian with a walker. Dave crunched me like a walnut, 6-2, 6-2, and left me feeling like the proverbial 99-pound weakling in those famous Charles Atlas ads whose manhandled by a bully on the beach. (All that was missing to make the picture complete was a pocket protector on my shirt pocket and tape around the bridge of my glasses.) Except that Dave Krueger is one of the kindest guys I know with not a hint of “bully” in him and thanks to his kindness and encouragement I resisted the urge to send my tennis racket through one of those wood chip devices that chops up trees. (There was one of those contraptions right across the street from where we were playing, which made it seem like Someone Up There was trying to tell me that maybe Finger Puppets would be a better outlet for my energies.) I had to also give thanks that my lovely wife wasn’t there to witness her husband’s Game of Shame. She actually came to Island Park the last time Dave and I played and she witnessed my 7-5 victory over my opponent, an occurrence which is as baffling as it is rare. Had she been there today, I’m sure she would have had a grocery bag over her head by the time I had lost the first four games in such miserable fashion. It was a potent reminder that for as easy-going as I am in many respects, I hate to lose- and that has been true for as long as I can remember. I don’t think anyone enjoys losing but I think most people shake it off a whole lot easier than I do. Which begs the question- why do I keep playing tennis with Dave Krueger, of all people- a guy who has more athletic skill in his little finger than I do in my whole body? Maybe deep down I am hoping to learn a lesson in gracious losing- and I’m losing enough to get plenty of practice at it- and certainly I feel like if I have to lose, I really don’t mind losing to someone as nice and as good as Dave. I just don’t like to lose by such a wide margin that it appears that I never got out of the car or maybe played with a ping pong paddle by mistake.
The worst thing was that as I walked off of the court with my tail dragging on the ground, I was fearing that this might be our last time playing for awhile. (Once the school year starts, it becomes all but impossible for us to get our schedules to line up) But in fact it sounds like we can still play at least once more. . . and I will simply hope that we’re back on one of our familiar courts next time where I can at least put up a decent fight and not play like an invalid. And typing those words reminds me to be grateful that I could get out on the court at all. My sister Randi right now is laid up with a herniated disk in her spine . . . and thinking about her plight makes today’s loss feel less like a disaster and more like a very temporary disappointment. That I can live with and maybe even smile about.
pictured: my opponent and tennis buddy, Dave Krueger, standing on the strange court on which we played this morning.