such a terrible racket

Today, I played tennis.  Tennis and I have kind of a weird history, though far from an interesting.  But interesting or not, that's what I'm writing today.

As a child, I was always fascinated with the tennis courts I saw at certain parks.  It looked like a lot of fun, though I didn't really understand what was happening or what the rules were.  Still, I would have fun standing outside of the courts, searching for overshot tennis balls and tossing them back in (perhaps after playing with them on my own for a bit).  Sometimes I could even find a ball when there was nobody playing tennis, and that would mean a toy to bring home for my dog!

Later, my mom got kid's tennis rackets for us, and we would go try to play from time to time.  However, since we always gave all the tennis balls to the dog to chew apart, we'd have to just hope that we could find a ball at the court.  Usually, luck was with us, and we hit the ball around wildly.  We didn't have any idea what the rules were, and we were far from good, but we enjoyed it all the same.

A few years after we got the rackets, I experienced the most profound change in my relationship with tennis that is ever likely to happen:  I started playing Mario Tennis.

The game that changed everything.

For the first time, I learned the rules of tennis.  I learned what a magical game it can be.  I learned the importance of teamwork, spin, positioning, and waiting for the right moment before returning.

Boo was my favorite character, so I didn't learn much about footwork.

But I fell in love with the game in a serious way.  The game I'm referring to here is Mario Tennis.  It was a lot more fun for me than actual tennis.  Needless to say, despite learning the rules finally, my actual tennis game suffered a lot in the following years.

I didn't really try to play tennis again until my family went on a trip to a ski resort in the exotic Pocono Mountains.  The ski lodge my mom chose was enormous, and, for some reason, almost entirely uninhabited.  My mom described the experience of staying there as "like The Shining," and I can't say she was wrong.  It was just endless hallway after endless hallway, and then I murdered everybody with an axe.

Before the murders, though, I played tennis in a vast, underground tennis court that they maintained for some reason.  It was an incredible experience primarily because the tennis court (for some reason) stretched about three times the length of regulation courts (78 feet according to the International Tennis Federation).  Also, it may have been underground, but the ceiling was very, very high up.  This meant we were able to hit the ball as hard as we wanted back and forth with absolutely no fear that it might go out of the arbitrarily-extended bounds.  It felt like being a superhero!  I mean...more than I normally feel like a superhero, which is quite a lot.

But in the end, my mom was too terrified by the twin girls who followed us everywhere we went in the hotel, and we never returned.  It's a shame; I'm sure they got lots of practice at tennis!

Eventually I went to college and made some friends.  Of those, a few of my Japanese friends made it a regular habit to play tennis.  I thought to myself "hey, I like tennis!" so I went to go play with them.

I got creamed.  It was an embarrassing experience through and through.  I saved face by...well, I never really was able save face with those guys.  I'm glad I had so much to begin with.

But I think they were so embarrassed for me that they completely forgot how incapable I was.  I think so because, when I went to Japan, I invited them to play tennis with me.  And they accepted!

A top-down view of my dorm in Japan.  That was one crummy tennis court.

And I got creamed, but in a much more fun way than I had anticipated.  Then the guy who did the most to destroy me sat down and serenaded us with his virtuoso piano skills for forty-five minutes.  Then he talked about how many more video games he plays than I do.  Tetsuya...you broke my heart that day.

So, despite having a tennis court literally in my backyard, I only played a few times while I was in Japan (honestly, I was much too busy playing GTA2, and getting engaged).  So by the time I returned to the United States, my game was much where I had left it.  Thankfully, my heart was where I'd left it, too, and the newest version of Mario Tennis had just been released!

A few years later, I tried playing tennis against the fianceé, and I creamed her.  It was a miserable experience for me, and an eye-opening one for her.  Apparently, in her family, tennis had always been something that was done more for the experience of watching a ball soar idly through the air than for any competitive purpose.  She could not adjust her mind to the concept of a person trying to hit the ball in a way that she would have trouble hitting it back.

Since that day, I've only really played against people who stood no chance.  Rather than inflating my ego, it's made me realize that there's a wide world I'm missing out on.  Plus, I no longer have a game system that can run Mario Tennis.  I need to get my fix somewhere.  Maybe there's room for me in that wide world.

Then again, when I played tennis against the wife and her aunt today, they were both so flummoxed with my powers that the wife remarked "you could have been a champion tennis player!"  I could have been a champion anything, I responded -- instead, I married you.

Game, set, and match.