I’ve been playing tennis since I started my stint here at my current employment about four and a half years ago. I swore to myself when I left the last job that I was going to take up a hobby. Something in my spare time that required physical and social interaction. Something that did not involve a soldering iron or a computer. I tried golf first. It required too much mental concentration and time to get any good. But the thing that shut the door on golf is that I found myself generally in a foul mood after having played a round. I wanted less stress and more fun. Golf did not cut it. At one point I even considered fencing. Yes. The thing with the foils and face guards. Though in retrospect, I don’t think the idea of me running around with pointy weapons, albeit blunted, is such a good idea. I finally settled on tennis.
What reason would I have to take up a hobby? Well. Let’s see. The two years I was up in Wichita Falls (Texas, not Kansas) was mostly work. What fun to be had was definitely not to be had in Wichita Falls. It was just that the job was quite demanding. I fulfilled my obligations and did the job with everything I could muster. I mustered quite a bit to tell you the truth. So much so that I found I had no personal life. I’m not knocking the city or it’s nightlife, but it wouldn’t generally be considered a cosmopolitan town in any sense of the word. I believe it has a population of about 100,000. Most of its economy comes from having an Air Force base there. When I was there, I was bored out of my mind. Here’s someone who grew up in a town of 10,000 and he was going out of his mind in a town 10 times that size. I think I outgrew my fishbowl. When the opportunity to work back in the Dallas-Fort Worth area became available, I took it with the utmost immediacy.
I signed for lessons at a local university that offered personal improvement classes like flower arranging, nude painting and such. I signed up for the beginners class and then followed that up with the advanced class. It was enjoyable. More so than I had expected it to be even though I still cursed from time-to-time. Okay. I cursed a lot during the process of learning the basics. I’m going to tell you something that completely generic and not very insightful. Sports, though fun, is a lot of work. It takes time to get really good at it. Four and a half years later, my backhand is still weaker than an infant and has about as much personality. My forehand is strong but lacks consistency. My serves started out a bullet train. Now? I might as well just have the ball shipped to the other side. It’d probably get there faster.
But aside from all that I still enjoy it. I’ve found new reserves of self-restraint in myself that I never thought I had before. My cursing on the court has dropped dramatically since I started. Even my curses has lost some of its “je ne sai quoi” quality. By that I mean that it was probably X-rated, if you could rate such things. Now it’s not even up there with the G rating. I’ve actually been heard screaming, “Darnit!” One couldn’t possibly think of a more pathetic curse than that. Unless of course you put “gosh” in front of it. I have not done that yet. We’ll see.