Tennis is Hard

As I mentioned in the comments in the post below -- I've been on vacation for the past few days. Due to our massive home construction project we couldn't actually afford to go anywhere this year, which was kinda depressing. Instead we just took some days to do work on the house and play outside and do whatever else is fun to do in the summer.

Well, because we have such fabulous fucking luck, we got slammed with a heatwave from Saturday to Wednesday, which were precisely the days we had off. It was too humid to finish painting, and too hot to do much outside. And since my car is having some kind of heat-related starting issues and his truck (aside from having broken AC) is also having problems, we couldn't so much as take a day trip. So basically, we just holed ourselves up for five days and acted like lazy people.

Pretty much the only thing of note I did all week was taking up tennis. Mr. Salty has been playing with his friends at work for a few weeks -- so on Tuesday we went out to the K-Mart and picked me out a shiny pink new racket. I don't know if shopping at K-Mart is any more PC then Wal-Mart (which I refuse) or Target (which I avoid) but dammit, we live in Berks County, Pennsylvania and where the hell else am I going to get a tennis racket? I'll say one thing for K-Mart's karma, they do employ handicapped people. Although to my discredit, after a long glance at the creepy retarded guy working the cashier with his tongue sticking out, (yes -- like a dog does) I put my soda back in the cooler because "I don't want that guy touching something I'm going to drink."

After getting stranded in the K-Mart parking lot for an hour after my car wouldn't start, (perhaps a dose of my own brand of karma after the soda incident) we got down to business. Now I haven't played tennis in a good dozen years or more (and even then my "skills" were questionable at best) but I figured, hell -- pushing 30 I'm probably in the best shape of my life! I should practically be a like a small, white Venus and/or Serena Williams on the court! I don't know why, but I always presume myself to have exceptional athletic abilities. When I was eight, I got it into my head that I wanted to play soccer. I fancied myself to be a natural at the sport, a virtual dynamo on the field! Which was, of course, reasonable imagined potential for an unusually small, pigeon-toed girl. If my parents were level-headed, responsible parents, they would have simply bought me a soccer ball so that I could carry out my fantasy in the backyard where no one would be the wiser. But since my parents were neither level headed or responsible, they went ahead and signed me up for a co-ed soccer team playing against boys twice my size, to have my dreams of prowess effectually crushed before me. I quit after one practice.

So it's no big surprise that I soon figured out that the fact that I can now run 5 miles in 45 minutes, or do big girl chin-ups has nothing whatsoever to do with any inherent tennis playing abilities. Apparently, being in athletic shape does not actually give you athletic abilities, like hand eye coordination and such. In fact, if anyone had been filming my performance, I guarantee you I would already be the next big YouTube sensation. I can see it now: "Spastic Girl Fails at Tennis." Mr. Salty could barely attempt to return my "serve" he was laughing so hard. Eventually, I got the hang of it enough that we were able to play a game of what I like to refer to as "Guerrilla Tennis," which simply means that there are no rules if you can manage to hit the ball back on the other side of the net -- whether it bounces three times or no times, each hit over the net is a minor victory. As I continue to excel at the sport, I think I may try to indoctrinate "Guerrilla Tennis" into the Olympics... or at least the Special Olympics.