Pirata's Stories

Courted and Courting

i miss this.  i need someone to play with.

my dad used to coach tennis for one of the local universities and that meant i had access to full hoppers.  when he wasn’t using them, i would take the giant ball bins down the street to the high school’s court and fire away.  i miss that.  

it was always difficult finding a good balance with someone to play with though.  every once in a while i’d luck out and get to play with someone really good, maybe someone really serious about it.  but that was usually for a lesson or such, not a constant match.  a lot of the time i played with people who were lucky to lob it over, let alone in a nice linear slice.  my father taught me a few things about tennis and one of them i find myself applying all over the place.  that would be “if you play with someone who’s game is worse, eventually your game gets worse too.”  looking at it now, its a lot like a conversation.  if one talks with only people who have poor diction, syntax, and semantics, then one’s maner of speaking will certainly decline.  if one converses with someone who works a bit extra in the intentions of speech, one’s speech will improve.  along this idea, it seems that a lot of guys i dumped were met their end along similar reasoning.  i have made a few excuses, picked up a raquet, and walked to the court with people i knew couldn’t even lob the ball into the bounds.  i suppose i did it because i became bored with working on my serve so much.  every time, every single time, after a few matches i knew it was just dragging my game down and i had to let them go.  i don’t mean to sound arrogant, but there it is.  im hoping one day to find some healthy competition.  its a tall order to fill and i am often hopeless it will come along, but if it does i know it will be worth the wait.  

it took me 27 years to learn what i knew when i was 12.

cheers to you if you understood any of that.  it IS a bit cryptic.  ah but that’s what makes it fun.

(originally written 28 December 2009.  original photography by jesse wright)