I hopped on my bike and headed up toward the club house………No! Wait! Come back! This is not another bicycle story! No balmy sunsets or singing birds or any of that stuff. Just hold your horses!

Now, where was I? Oh, yes. Riding up toward the club house. Now, before you get the wrong idea about this place, the club house is just a very nice building that if you live here, you can pay them to let you use it. No one was trying to serve me smoked salmon pâté as I went past! Anyway, the sight of the tennis courts took me back, (you know how tennis courts do) to 1983. We were living in south Florida, building houses. We had a rag tag crew of good hearted guys who……well, let’s just leave it at that! They were good hearted.

One day after work, four of us went to the tennis courts in Heritage Ridge, at least I think that was the name of it. (As though there was a ridge within three hundred miles!) It was a nice neighborhood, but not so nice that they felt the need to put up a guarded entry or lock the gates on the tennis courts to keep the rag tag carpenters out.

There was my brother, Dwight, Richard Hall, Larry Harrison and me. We played doubles, Dwight and Richard versus Larry and me. It was a pretty mediocre affair for the most part…….until:

Dwight and Larry were manning the opposite back courts and Richard and I faced each other up front. The game went back and forth until Dwight hit a good shot that touched down near the back line on our side. Larry was quick enough to get to it, but not quick enough to properly address the ball. He scooped it over his shoulder and sent is floating in a high, lazy arc that would take it just over the net.

I once heard a preacher define a miracle as “the suspension of natural laws”. So, what happened next may very well have been miraculous. As the ball descended, it seemed to slow down and float like one of those spirit orbs they manage to find on the ghost hunting TV shows. As I instinctively charged the net, my mind made some rapid calculations and showed me the error of my ways. I screeched to a halt about ten feet from where Richard was bringing his fully extended racket down toward what was, for all intents and purposes a stationary target. I whirled….well, I began to whirl. I made it about half way around when I heard the thwack of a tennis racket, followed almost simultaneously by the WHAP of a tennis ball slapping the soft, bare flesh of my right side, just above the waist! Man! Did that sting!

I sent my racket sailing over the fence, whoo, whoo, whooing as it spun end around end. “You IDIOT!” I screamed at Larry. “What are trying to do, get me killed?” I went into full rant and rave mode. I wanted to attack Larry, but I had just thrown my best chance at that over the fence! I was crazy with rage, but not that crazy! Now hold on a minute, boys and girls! Yes, I’m talking about THAT Larry! I know he just dozes on the couch all day, but way back when!…… Way back in the day, he was bad to the bone! Fast as all get out and strong as a bull! So, I just pranced around twisting my head to observe the bright “strawberry” on my side and screaming at Larry.

Meanwhile, the other three were virtually incapacitated by mirth! They rocked back and forth and put their hands on their knees and fairly bellowed with laughter. I did what any self- respecting man would do. I went out in the weeds to find my racket!

So, you ask, why was I not mad at Richard? After all, it was he who actually inflicted the wound! If you had ever watched Richard play tennis, you would understand. He never had any idea where the ball was going to go after he hit it!

I will leave these three unrepentant sinners with a phrase from my favorite sociologist, Ernest T. Bass:

I’m going to get YOU and YOU and You!

 

Now, tomorrow I’m gonna tell you about this neat bike ride I went on.