Friday, February 22, 2002

..

you can buy them in SoCo

I might be done now

oh, but this one is pretty good

"I don't think becoming a grown-up means losing your sense of playfulness. What it does mean, I believe, is the willingness to make choices, take chances, commit yourself to one way of life over another."
Joseph Epstein, an essay 'Grow Up, Why Dontcha' in a collection Narcissus Leaves the Pool

I go to work for meetings and e-mails and preparing for presentations next week. But it is Friday. Yea! And the meetings are mostly good technical brainstorming meetings rather than dull planning ones or the umpteenth review of reorgs.

Lunch has to sandwiched between meetings. I have grated cheese and jalapenos in the refrigerator. You know the rest.

Tennis. I love the sport. I love it for the same reason Sarah Hughes loves to skate and Apollo Ono loves to skate fast inches from others. Because it reduces everything to a few simple rules and variables and yet you never know what is going to happen.

I had invited a guest to this event at my club, but he couldn't come. So they pair me with pros. But you only play eight games with a given partner so I have different guys to play with. Clayton, my favorite, looks seventeen but is maybe twenty. He is small and from W. Texas. Compact and unspectactular-looking, a look of West Texas privilege worn with the air of a kid whose parents instilled in him a duty for genteel behavior and good character. He wears baggie shorts. Maybe he's teaching at the club, I don't know.

I like sweet youngsters like this but what I really love about this kid is when the ball passes me, no matter where he is on court, he chases up to it and returns it. He is amazing. I'm so bad that I can make him lose, however. I do win with some partners. My serve goes in mostly. I hit some winners (the pros set us up, of course). One of my amateur partners slams a serve into my back but it doesn't hurt much. My knees, though, scream. I don't listen. We play thirty-two games. It is 'no ad' though with the sudden death point played man-to-man or woman-to-woman.

I have been drinking water. Most of my companions have been drinking margaritas. One of the pros comes around with a pitcher to refill several times. I try to remember everyone's name. I need to get to know people here and hang out and play. But I don't do a very good job.

After they mercifully let me stop playing, there is salad, tortilla soup, enchiladas, pralines, flan and more margaritas. Four pros play an exhibition. The temperature drops. Forrest has been working out and doesn't have a jacket. We sit inside the pro shop looking back and forth from the Olympics on TV to the game on the exhibition court. I sip a little margarita to ease the pain but I know I need Advil. So we go home around 9:30. I must say that I've dreamed for years of belonging to this club and it's wonderful. The courts are beautiful but the people are also very nice. I should take lessons to get me out there. Of course, lessons might spoil what 'natural' ability I've developed to stay on the court and not embarrass myself. I hit some balls back, I held my own (go, Clayton!) and I'm happy but sore.

After tennis. I take three Advil. FFP pours me a Jack Daniels. I doze over my Joseph Epstein book with more Olympics and then reruns (of course, don't you wish they made it still?) of Northern Exposure. I go to bed. Around 5AM I'm up to take an Aloe Gel Cap and more Advil.

Play more tennis. That's what I should do. But in order to do so I would need to lose some weight and work out with weights for my legs to take some pressure off my knees and hips. Otherwise, I fear to play more than once every week or so.

I had a good day, really. I didn't take it all too seriously. Even though I had to talk about the same stuff over and over again. It will all be forgotten in ten years. All that will be left will be sore knees, memories of the people. The little techno dust ups and the passionate debates over what products to build and how mostly forgotten.

Don't take it too seriously. That's what I say. Often, I don't follow my own advice. But as I get older, I get better at it. I swear.

I think the count of officially admitted readers, readers who know how to find the page because I told them, has reached six. I doubt all six are actually hanging on my every word. In fact, one of them is almost certainly too busy to be here.

Yeah, I have a lot of pictures from our weekend adventure. I actually still have a few more. But I'll try to be less boring soon. Hey, it's a new weekend.

JUST TYPING
Thirty nine feet by
Thirty six feet.
To cover.
To choose your spot.
On your side: a wasteland of possible grief.
On their side: a well-guarded bastion.
The same size?
Surely not.