You Do Not Do That

Truth be told, during nearly every minute of the time that I was not here with you blogging, I was playing tennis. And lo, when you do something all the time, think about it, read about it, and go at it like it's your job, you get better at it. My whole team has gotten better together, and we just wrapped up a very successful season, winning our division and making it through four playoff matches, but today we got beat in the city semifinals for our league.

I know you probably don't want to hear about it, but just in case you do.

If we'd won today, we'd have had a shot at being city champions next Sunday. And we shoulda had those girls--we had to win three of five matches and we won two. But Pretty Neighbor and I played together and we won our line, so I was happy. The team we played was nice, so I was like, "Okay, Godspeed ladies, that cheese and sausage dip was really good, thank you."

Now, LAST week, oh man. We played a team filled with horrible trolls. One of the women I played came up to my partner and me after warm-up and gave us a big speech about how she was deaf in one ear, and "here's how this will affect [us]," and blah blah blah, she would be screaming out the score and all her calls, she said, and she wanted us to scream too or else she would not hear us. You would be surprised at how this took fully five minutes to explain to us. Five minutes in which my partner and I just nodded and said, "Okay, got it. Yep. We'll be sure you hear us. Yep."

Now, my mother has no hearing in one ear, and you will not hear her mention it from one year to the next. So this lady's "deaf girl" routine--she referred to herself as a deaf girl--just started to seem like gamesmanship. Over the top. Like, feel sorry for me because I'm hard of hearing?

And indeed, her hearing grew worse and worse throughout our three-set match, until by the end we were questioning the score, and even her partner was involved, and she just could not hear or comprehend what we were saying to her even though we were all shouting. Oh sweet Mary. She made good on her promise to scream everything too, and scream it with what I can only describe as a flourish. If you can put a flourish in your voice.

Then she called one of my serves out, when twenty people saw it hit the line and hit the line beautifully. And I questioned her and she pointed to a fictional fuzz mark the ball supposedly left on the blue outside the service box. Like this is the US Open and we play with new balls every few games. Whatever crazy.

And then she had the nerve to beat us.

But all of this would have been fine. Like they say on The Wire, it all in the game.

But the wrongest thing of all: they hosted us at their neighborhood, which means they provide lunch and drinks. And hopefully some sort of welcoming vibe. First problem, there just wasn't much food there. It looked like they'd cleaned out the pantry. Like somebody's old third of a bag of fritos. Then someone said that they had pizza, had it stashed up on the gazebo where the snacks were set up. I figured they couldn't really be meaning to hide it, so I hopped up there and said, "So there's some secret pizza?" I beelined toward a blanket spread out on a bench, a blanket that looked like it was covering pizza boxes, and it was.

"We were trying to keep it warm," this girl said. Then her friend goes, "Yeah, we wanted to be sure there was enough for the people playing to eat." She said this to me pointedly, like I had crashed this terrible terrible party. I was like, "Did you not just see me playing three hours of tennis right there?" And that pizza was cold anyway.

But then, THEN, while several girls were still playing, like I think it was only the third match, they just packed up all the food and water and took it away. Like, gone. They spirited away all the beverages. Lincoln had to go down the road and get pizza and drinks for us or we would probably have all starved there in the cold twilight.

At that point we were like, these bitches need to go DOWN. We had split the first four matches, two apiece, and our line five girls took the court and pulled out a win. They were fired up. It was a nail-biter, and we were so happy. There was cheering and hugging.

But y'all, we were so aghast that they took all the food and drinks away. Like, you can be super annoying on the actual court and make bad calls and whatever. But that lapse in hospitality? Total transgression. So we proceeded to trash them to everybody in the league.

Best not mess with the luncheon.

Possibly this confirms the worst things that are said about ladies' rec tennis. Don't care!

There were also lots of lovely times this season. And here's to more lovely times to come and no secret pizza.

xoxox