Then I flew off the left wall, gingerly spun to the floor like a young ballerina trained in action movie special effects and managed to barely, albeit confidently, make a side ricochet shot to the left front corner. He returned it. Low and fast the ball traveled near bullet-train speeds straight to the back wall wherein I raced and then caught up with the blur of blue, nailed it back to the previous corner of choice and avoided an ugly meeting with the glass by doing a kind of swimmer’s flip turn pushing off the glass with my feet and landing with the agility of a ninja in an ‘80s movie. The faces of the crowd went from dropped jaws to the looks of mystical awakenings watching my performance and then my dad’s easy, far from flamboyant return hit and subsequent win in a match of racquetball.The origins started around the time of those movies. I remember my friends and I wanting to be Ninjas when we grew up. Not cowboys or firemen, or portfolio managers or accounts receivable reps; but Ninjas cloaked in elegant cloth and weaponry silently stalking our prey in either good or bad guy modes of stealth. In the early ‘80s racquetball was ‘in’ as the preeminent sport of the yuppie crowd. I imagine guys coming from the office, stowing their leather briefcases in lockers, snapping on white headbands and getting a quick round in before going home to woo the ‘Misses’. I factually remember my dad taking me downtown to the DAC (Denver Athletic Club) on weekends to watch him play racquetball with his friends and then see people run in circles above a basketball court when I got bored. It was the time of Reaganomics and Soviets, Flashdance and Old Spice. 1983 was the year I finished kindergarten and started swimming competitively. It was also the year that my dad was the same age as I am now; 31.
In a kind of surface cultural way,’83 was probably the last year in which the ‘70s overlapped the new decade. Oil made a comeback, punk evolved into new-wave music and fashion trends, the détente of the ‘70s between the rival superpowers ended with a new arms race. Sounds kooky, but the DAC was to me a microcosm of the times. Bushy sideburns gave way to short spiky hair, dark wood paneling fell out in favor of wallpaper, racquets went from wood to graphite and fiberglass, carpet was shag and then berber. Likewise, my ambition to become a professional ninja metastasized during this age and I saw this weird, fun looking sport of beating the hell out of a blue rubber ball as the perfect introduction to ninjitsu. Only problem; I didn’t tell anyone.
Part of my personality involves not being vocal about things I want. So for example; I would expect my parents to know, and then politely ask me if I wanted to try racquetball or to just know that I wanted a dog really bad. Of course they didn’t being that my telepathy wasn’t as developed as it should have been back then, because part of the unspoken ninja code is secrecy; so I couldn’t just come out and say it because ninjas don’t speak too much and they probably don’t covet things like dogs and toys and stuff. A bit of a bind yes, but I saw it as my first real test of ninja-ness. Anyway, it didn’t work and I wound up doing swimming instead on the account of some of my neighborhood friends doing it and my parents either misreading the telepathy or thinking that it would be good for me as a communal sport to do with friends – silly I know. Whatever the reason, racquetball didn’t happen for me and it fell by the wayside as did other things like football and karate. And later on my telepathy failed me more, and more often when I had crushes on girls that didn’t seem to notice my telepathic longing for them, and as a result never introduced themselves to me, or they did but then expected me to make the next move when clearly the telepathy stated that they needed to make the leap or just out and out fawn over me. What can I say? Either the full messages weren’t received, even though I bombarded parties of interest with my telepathic mind powers, or I wasn’t cut out to be a true ninjitsu master; or the whole ninja thing was total bullshit.
For my serve, I threw him off by slicing the ball edge on so it approached him like a corkscrew – or a curveball on another planet with gravitational instabilities. The ball landed hitting the lacquered floor with such fierce english that it bounced back toward me up front, which I then dodged by jumping straight up and clinging to the ceiling awaiting his miss. But he didn’t miss. Diving for the ball, he hit it just hard enough to lob, barely making it to the wall of play. “Lucky!” So I then pushed off the ceiling and landed like a cat to return the play. And like a laser, I hit the ball hard – so hard in fact that its shape changed to resemble a pancake cutting through the air at supersonic speeds. Somehow he got to it, and to his credit; repelled my force by reflecting the laser pancake back at me. I merged with the floor to escape and his ball hit the ground costing him a win. My victory, on the account of his default. Mine.
So I swam for the next 8 years, until I was 14 and started high school. From day one I had my suspicions that this sport would not help with my training because I never saw or heard about ninjas swimming – but if I wanted to be a Navy SEAL or some kind of commando, it would then be valid. That was not the case; and in all honesty, I was a pretty average swimmer. The best I ever accomplished was taking 4th place in the state All-Star meet in the 100 meter backstroke, and that about killed me. I remember the disappointment of my family and coaches when as a high school freshman, I made the grave decision to stop swimming. At the time everyone except me was thinking scholarship, even though I had informed them via telepathy that there is no college of ninjitsu and that the ancient masters would balk if they knew that I had wasted my time on such a frivolous endeavor. So my answer to their downtrodden faces was that I had swallowed enough chlorine water to kill any kind of desire to continue.
After I broke free of the swimming debacle, I decided to fulfill my childhood desire and join the school’s football team. But after a full season of abuse and injuries, I realized that (1) football was not as fun as I thought and (2) getting hit in this sport is not like it looks on TV, but more akin to walking out into a busy intersection full of cars and elephants; and for the record, pads don’t help. To communicate this feeling even more, I would suggest running as fast as you can into any kind of solid wall. I sucked into extreme levels at football because at the first moment of impact in a game, I was transformed into a human piñata; my blood spilling onto the field, tainting what little confidence I had, and of course the sharks of the opposing team knew it and from then on they were chasing my fear. Should’ve known that this most inelegant sport of sports would not accelerate my aspirations any more than NASCAR would.
One sport I am pretty good at is skiing. Contrary to other misguided attempts, this sport is constructive to an apprentice ninja and it’s fun as hell – only now am I seeing the connection of “fun” to my calling (“Wow, having fun isn’t just a waste of time but really important to mental health!”). I know; you don’t have to say it, but it came to me almost as an epiphany all these years later – fun and play are vital to existence. Anyway, I started skiing around the same time as the swim team thing, but according to my adult brain, skiing didn’t take as much of a hold as swimming because of the vast differences in proximity to the neighborhood pool (.5 hours on foot) and mountain resorts (1.5 hours average drive time); and whereas the swim league was more or less free, the ski resorts seemed to have a monetary filtering process that cunningly eliminated people from middle to lower class backgrounds to enjoy the skiing experience – and this is 25 years ago, nowadays the rise in lift ticket prices, equipment, parking, gas, food, etc., could actually rival the inflation rate of war torn Germany after WWI. So my child brain was wondering, “why swim when skiing is funner?” Again, the telepathy just wasn’t there yet, but gradually around ’88 the messages started to come through because I found myself enrolled in a ski club that went skiing every weekend of the season. And this was a godsend because I got to ski with my friends every Saturday without parental supervision; or any other forms of supervision because I conveniently lied to my elders about taking lessons all day when in actuality, I was jumping off death defying cliffs, recklessly speeding down slopes, eating candy for lunch, skiing in closed and out of bounds areas, and cussing like Huck Finn. Yes, skiing was good to me and good for me as it taught me balance, speed, flight, dexterity, endurance. But at the risk of being too solipsistic, I did have my follies, including; 2 concussions, both thumbs jammed, a hyper extended and sprained knee, a black eye, a torn nail off of the right big toe, both wrists sprained, a case of whiplash, a 2nd degree sunburn, various cases of minor frostbite, cuts, scrapes, bruises, and most recently in ’07, a torn co-lateral ligament in my left hand that’s known on the mountain as, ‘Skier’s Thumb’, also the sprained knee and 1 of the concussions required me to be carried down the mountain in a ski patrol stretcher. I always told myself (sometimes delusionally) that every time I fell I was learning something new, “hmm, next time I won’t try doing a back flip off the chairlift.” Really, really hard knocks I guess.
Gradually the skiing tapered off due mainly to the aforementioned ticket prices and injuries, but I was also being pulled in other directions like working, and spending a large part of my then current life becoming a Heavy Metal Warrior. Sadly, the racquetball interest waned significantly during the adolescent years. That in between phase from kid to adult does weird things to one’s head; and it only becomes apparent a few eons later. And by this time I had all but put the sport and any lingering ninja desires to bed for a long sleep.
We went to slurp water from the drinking fountain before our next match. Silence; and then I say, “you played hard dad, I thought you had me.”
“Yeah.”
Then more slurping. At this point in a match there’s a razor thin line that must be waltzed upon when it comes to water. Too little is bad; too much is bad. And one thing I do have a talent for is proper water consumption. In a devious way, I made something up about the rec center mistakenly having the heat on in the racquetball courts and trailed it off with some unhumorus attempts at bitchy humor that he doesn’t really pay attention to but is polite and nodding anyway. And then I pause just long enough for him to notice that I’ve stopped talking and finish it off with, “seems like I need extra water to combat the sweat release.” And I then proceed to stick my face in the fountain with my lips closed not drinking for a good few seconds and then look out of the corner of my eye at him waiting, probably in deep concentration about his strategy in the next match or wondering what he’s gonna have for dinner that night. I move out of the way and he takes a nice long slurp.
Midway through the next match he grabs his side and I see him wince and cringe from the feeling of a belly full of water and I smile.
Fast Forward to 2002. Racquetball has been in permanent remission since the early ‘90s as it’s diminished popularity faded into the darkest corners of rec centers and clubs. Sometimes the courts have been bulldozed in remodeling projects to make room for more popular activities, or on some occasions, one battered court is left remaining as a transformed squash/pickle ball/badminton/racquetball court that allows for the most amount of people in as little space as possible that is both economical for rec centers and bad for scheduling. I once saw a place that used it’s sole racquetball court as storage space – oh the times have a changed.
’02 was coincidentally, the year my dad hit 50 and started playing racquetball again. After playing the sport into the ‘90s with fewer and fewer friends that knew of the game or how to play it; the spaces between games turned to years and he unknowingly let his racquet accumulate a hefty layer of dust. His reasons for getting back into the game were duplicitous in a parental and epicurean sense, as the idea was to spend time with my sister who was away at college – albeit in state – and, eat. They would meet once a week or so, play in the evening, and then embark on dining adventures in some of Denver and Boulder’s best and worst greasy spoons. For obvious gastrointestinal and sibling rivalry-like reasons, I became jealous as hell when I found out about their shenanigans. Could the ole kid sister be plotting behind my back to become a rival ninja? A combatant ninjette? Perhaps; but to this day, I do not know. So in retaliation and spite, I sent out a heated batch of telepathy and offset it with some ESP, telekinesis, or some kind of higher paranormal brainwave function that I had learned via a Time Life Books infomercial circa ‘89. It did the trick, because after months of pouting doldrums my dad asked me if I wanted to play sometime. A smile.
I was 25 that first time. And it kicked my ass so bad that I could hardly walk the next day. Seriously, I had trouble getting out of the truck for a few days; it was excruciatingly embarrassing. I’ve since learned that if one wants it to, racquetball will beat you up, push you to your physical limits, and generally manhandle your pride. And I say this because going into all the matches I play with my dad, I have the utmost confidence that I’ll succeed, and effortlessly win; but honestly that rarely happens, even in present times. At first, he played me left handed, which tipped things my way a little until he progressively got better and became ambidextrous. Keep in mind that this man was twice my age then. Nowadays he’s 56 and I feel like I’m in my physical prime, yet I’ve been getting killed on a weekly basis for the last 6 years! It’s almost not funny, but when I ponder it; I just feel and know that my dad is by far the better athlete. He simply deserves to win all the time. And it’s because he has an enormous will that’s absolutely unbreakable, plus an ability to focus and concentrate that is monkish in nature. Was he born with this innate talent, or did he learn it during his time in the Eagle Scouts or the Marine Corps? Maybe he developed it when he got bored during all those marathons, bike tours, and triathlons? I should ask him sometime.
So what can I do? He’s got the talent and discipline and I’ve got the creativity to think of alternatives to substitute for my lack of skill. Among the things that I’ve tried with varying degrees of success to help improve my game are:
• a new racquet
• nutritious diet
• a new guitar
• change of employment
• new shoes
• vacations
• eye protection
• different haircuts
• new balls
• different venues
• not getting wasted the night before
• vitamins
• designating some of my clothes as ‘lucky’
• restringing of racquets
• positive thinking
• getting wasted the night before
• vegetarianism
• reading up on the game
• caffeine
• tennis
• stretching
• racquet gloves.
For my serve, I threw him off by slicing the ball edge on so it approached him like a corkscrew – or a curveball on another planet with gravitational instabilities. The ball landed hitting the lacquered floor with such fierce english that it bounced back toward me up front, which I then dodged by jumping straight up and clinging to the ceiling awaiting his miss. But he didn’t miss. Diving for the ball, he hit it just hard enough to lob, barely making it to the wall of play. “Lucky!” So I then pushed off the ceiling and landed like a cat to return the play. And like a laser, I hit the ball hard – so hard in fact that its shape changed to resemble a pancake cutting through the air at supersonic speeds. Somehow he got to it, and to his credit; repelled my force by reflecting the laser pancake back at me. I merged with the floor to escape and his ball hit the ground costing him a win. My victory, on the account of his default. Mine.
So I swam for the next 8 years, until I was 14 and started high school. From day one I had my suspicions that this sport would not help with my training because I never saw or heard about ninjas swimming – but if I wanted to be a Navy SEAL or some kind of commando, it would then be valid. That was not the case; and in all honesty, I was a pretty average swimmer. The best I ever accomplished was taking 4th place in the state All-Star meet in the 100 meter backstroke, and that about killed me. I remember the disappointment of my family and coaches when as a high school freshman, I made the grave decision to stop swimming. At the time everyone except me was thinking scholarship, even though I had informed them via telepathy that there is no college of ninjitsu and that the ancient masters would balk if they knew that I had wasted my time on such a frivolous endeavor. So my answer to their downtrodden faces was that I had swallowed enough chlorine water to kill any kind of desire to continue.
After I broke free of the swimming debacle, I decided to fulfill my childhood desire and join the school’s football team. But after a full season of abuse and injuries, I realized that (1) football was not as fun as I thought and (2) getting hit in this sport is not like it looks on TV, but more akin to walking out into a busy intersection full of cars and elephants; and for the record, pads don’t help. To communicate this feeling even more, I would suggest running as fast as you can into any kind of solid wall. I sucked into extreme levels at football because at the first moment of impact in a game, I was transformed into a human piñata; my blood spilling onto the field, tainting what little confidence I had, and of course the sharks of the opposing team knew it and from then on they were chasing my fear. Should’ve known that this most inelegant sport of sports would not accelerate my aspirations any more than NASCAR would.
One sport I am pretty good at is skiing. Contrary to other misguided attempts, this sport is constructive to an apprentice ninja and it’s fun as hell – only now am I seeing the connection of “fun” to my calling (“Wow, having fun isn’t just a waste of time but really important to mental health!”). I know; you don’t have to say it, but it came to me almost as an epiphany all these years later – fun and play are vital to existence. Anyway, I started skiing around the same time as the swim team thing, but according to my adult brain, skiing didn’t take as much of a hold as swimming because of the vast differences in proximity to the neighborhood pool (.5 hours on foot) and mountain resorts (1.5 hours average drive time); and whereas the swim league was more or less free, the ski resorts seemed to have a monetary filtering process that cunningly eliminated people from middle to lower class backgrounds to enjoy the skiing experience – and this is 25 years ago, nowadays the rise in lift ticket prices, equipment, parking, gas, food, etc., could actually rival the inflation rate of war torn Germany after WWI. So my child brain was wondering, “why swim when skiing is funner?” Again, the telepathy just wasn’t there yet, but gradually around ’88 the messages started to come through because I found myself enrolled in a ski club that went skiing every weekend of the season. And this was a godsend because I got to ski with my friends every Saturday without parental supervision; or any other forms of supervision because I conveniently lied to my elders about taking lessons all day when in actuality, I was jumping off death defying cliffs, recklessly speeding down slopes, eating candy for lunch, skiing in closed and out of bounds areas, and cussing like Huck Finn. Yes, skiing was good to me and good for me as it taught me balance, speed, flight, dexterity, endurance. But at the risk of being too solipsistic, I did have my follies, including; 2 concussions, both thumbs jammed, a hyper extended and sprained knee, a black eye, a torn nail off of the right big toe, both wrists sprained, a case of whiplash, a 2nd degree sunburn, various cases of minor frostbite, cuts, scrapes, bruises, and most recently in ’07, a torn co-lateral ligament in my left hand that’s known on the mountain as, ‘Skier’s Thumb’, also the sprained knee and 1 of the concussions required me to be carried down the mountain in a ski patrol stretcher. I always told myself (sometimes delusionally) that every time I fell I was learning something new, “hmm, next time I won’t try doing a back flip off the chairlift.” Really, really hard knocks I guess.
Gradually the skiing tapered off due mainly to the aforementioned ticket prices and injuries, but I was also being pulled in other directions like working, and spending a large part of my then current life becoming a Heavy Metal Warrior. Sadly, the racquetball interest waned significantly during the adolescent years. That in between phase from kid to adult does weird things to one’s head; and it only becomes apparent a few eons later. And by this time I had all but put the sport and any lingering ninja desires to bed for a long sleep.
We went to slurp water from the drinking fountain before our next match. Silence; and then I say, “you played hard dad, I thought you had me.”
“Yeah.”
Then more slurping. At this point in a match there’s a razor thin line that must be waltzed upon when it comes to water. Too little is bad; too much is bad. And one thing I do have a talent for is proper water consumption. In a devious way, I made something up about the rec center mistakenly having the heat on in the racquetball courts and trailed it off with some unhumorus attempts at bitchy humor that he doesn’t really pay attention to but is polite and nodding anyway. And then I pause just long enough for him to notice that I’ve stopped talking and finish it off with, “seems like I need extra water to combat the sweat release.” And I then proceed to stick my face in the fountain with my lips closed not drinking for a good few seconds and then look out of the corner of my eye at him waiting, probably in deep concentration about his strategy in the next match or wondering what he’s gonna have for dinner that night. I move out of the way and he takes a nice long slurp.
Midway through the next match he grabs his side and I see him wince and cringe from the feeling of a belly full of water and I smile.
Fast Forward to 2002. Racquetball has been in permanent remission since the early ‘90s as it’s diminished popularity faded into the darkest corners of rec centers and clubs. Sometimes the courts have been bulldozed in remodeling projects to make room for more popular activities, or on some occasions, one battered court is left remaining as a transformed squash/pickle ball/badminton/racquetball court that allows for the most amount of people in as little space as possible that is both economical for rec centers and bad for scheduling. I once saw a place that used it’s sole racquetball court as storage space – oh the times have a changed.
’02 was coincidentally, the year my dad hit 50 and started playing racquetball again. After playing the sport into the ‘90s with fewer and fewer friends that knew of the game or how to play it; the spaces between games turned to years and he unknowingly let his racquet accumulate a hefty layer of dust. His reasons for getting back into the game were duplicitous in a parental and epicurean sense, as the idea was to spend time with my sister who was away at college – albeit in state – and, eat. They would meet once a week or so, play in the evening, and then embark on dining adventures in some of Denver and Boulder’s best and worst greasy spoons. For obvious gastrointestinal and sibling rivalry-like reasons, I became jealous as hell when I found out about their shenanigans. Could the ole kid sister be plotting behind my back to become a rival ninja? A combatant ninjette? Perhaps; but to this day, I do not know. So in retaliation and spite, I sent out a heated batch of telepathy and offset it with some ESP, telekinesis, or some kind of higher paranormal brainwave function that I had learned via a Time Life Books infomercial circa ‘89. It did the trick, because after months of pouting doldrums my dad asked me if I wanted to play sometime. A smile.
I was 25 that first time. And it kicked my ass so bad that I could hardly walk the next day. Seriously, I had trouble getting out of the truck for a few days; it was excruciatingly embarrassing. I’ve since learned that if one wants it to, racquetball will beat you up, push you to your physical limits, and generally manhandle your pride. And I say this because going into all the matches I play with my dad, I have the utmost confidence that I’ll succeed, and effortlessly win; but honestly that rarely happens, even in present times. At first, he played me left handed, which tipped things my way a little until he progressively got better and became ambidextrous. Keep in mind that this man was twice my age then. Nowadays he’s 56 and I feel like I’m in my physical prime, yet I’ve been getting killed on a weekly basis for the last 6 years! It’s almost not funny, but when I ponder it; I just feel and know that my dad is by far the better athlete. He simply deserves to win all the time. And it’s because he has an enormous will that’s absolutely unbreakable, plus an ability to focus and concentrate that is monkish in nature. Was he born with this innate talent, or did he learn it during his time in the Eagle Scouts or the Marine Corps? Maybe he developed it when he got bored during all those marathons, bike tours, and triathlons? I should ask him sometime.
So what can I do? He’s got the talent and discipline and I’ve got the creativity to think of alternatives to substitute for my lack of skill. Among the things that I’ve tried with varying degrees of success to help improve my game are:
• a new racquet
• nutritious diet
• a new guitar
• change of employment
• new shoes
• vacations
• eye protection
• different haircuts
• new balls
• different venues
• not getting wasted the night before
• vitamins
• designating some of my clothes as ‘lucky’
• restringing of racquets
• positive thinking
• getting wasted the night before
• vegetarianism
• reading up on the game
• caffeine
• tennis
• stretching
• racquet gloves.
None of ‘em helped to the extent that I needed. But in the spirit of not being a quitter, I’ve got a few things that I haven’t tried yet that might do me some good.
• lessons
• exercising
• self-help books
• hookers
• a headband
• meditation
• binge drinking
• several new eyepieces for my telescope
• cheating
• composing racquetball poetry
• practicing
As is shown, the balance is tipped almost significantly toward failure. ‘Almost’ because that brilliant star to steer by revealed its beautiful head once again. Not an astronaut or famous singer, or a plumber or office manager; but a ninja cloaked in worn out clothes and a neat racquet, clumsily running and jumping all over the court. I hear him instructing, guiding me through play, smiling, having fun. Investing axioms of wisdom in my head that come with age and vantage points. Keeping spirits up as I get pummeled on game day. Making the whole adventure authentic as an experience and not an outcome – the experienced road is long but not endless and there’s much enjoyment to be had along the way. A whisper in my ear; “shut the fuck up, quit your bitching, and start having some fun!”
“Okay” I tell myself as I plan my comeback from an 11 point deficit. And… BAM! My serve nearly cracks the concrete wall of play, shattering the ball in the effect. It rains down singed blue rubber that stinks real bad. Redo. I lob it to the right corner and he struggles as he’s not quite sure how to return it. But he does. Barely. I transform into a human Chinese Star by doing continuous front flips up to the front of the court. Smack the ball, anticipate his demise, but no. Again, he gets to it somehow – I don’t know. I see the ball going to the other side of the court and meditate for roughly 7 nanoseconds. A dive, then a crash; blood everywhere. But I am not stopped because I returned it somehow. Barely. At this point I feel and look like Rocky when he called out, “Yo Adrian! We did it!” But it wasn’t over. His return hit came right at me like I was a bullseye. I deflected it like a warrior with my racquet as a shield, and it flew high, just scraping the wall. He hit back, lobbing the ball – almost floating in the air. Everything went into slo-mo. In awe, we both watched the ball ascend and then descend. He was ready for whatever I might do; ninja or not. I gripped my racquet with both hands in samurai fashion, cocked my arms behind my head and flung it as an Excalibur to meet its match in the air.
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1 comments:
Great essay... love the creative avenue for personal disclosure too! (us counselor types like that sort of thing ;) And, as someone who has recently fallen into your racquetball spell… who has a record of 3 and 63 against you (or close to that ;), I’d agree that enjoying the process or “experience” is more important than the “outcome!” However, with that said, as a fellow ninja wannabe from the past, look out… your time is coming my friend!! And, if I have to, I will borrow Michaels’ ninja shoes (yes, the ones that looked like mittens for your feet)! It’s too funny—he recently told me that he was a closet ninja too back in the day and actually had those shoes! So, I’m finding that I’m sharing more in common with my friends than I ever knew… :)
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