Did I mention I’m taking tennis lessons? This was my attempt at saying, “suck it junior high tennis coach, I’ll show you I can play tennis!” because yeah, I tried out for the team and clearly couldn’t play. (20+ years later and getting my revenge!) Tennis is big on my mom’s side of the family with many uncles playing. One summer I asked my uncle if he’d teach me and he said, “I’ll teach you once you can hit the ball 100 times against the wall.” Guess what, I haven’t had to do that at all in my lessons. I think he didn’t want to teach me because I was his annoying niece. So I tried to hit the ball on the one open wall at my granny’s house with only about 3 feet of space. I failed. I gave up. But I still wanted to play.<\/p>\n
Fast forward 20+ years\u00a0and adult tennis lesson are offered at the nearby tennis dome (year-round tennis in Minnesota, baby!). I started taking them a year ago and have mostly kept up with it since.<\/p>\n
It’s a lot of fun and and I feel athletic even though I have NO athletic bone in my body. Obviously people with more athletic skills do much better but for me it’s just enough to challenge me and yet stay fun.<\/p>\n
After my first session of lessons, I decided to buy my own racket. Justin came along too and bought one. For some reason, I was under the impression that he had played before.<\/p>\n
“Let’s play together!” he said. I was all for that because one day-a-week of lessons wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to play all the time. So I booked a court, got a babysitter and we went to play tennis. I was excited to play with someone outside my lessons and excited this was something Justin and I could do.<\/p>\n
We got to the court and I served to Justin first. When the ball bounced to him, he hit is so hard it didn’t even bounce. It went above my head!<\/p>\n
“Hey! I thought you said you could play tennis?”<\/p>\n
“I’ve played racquetball.”<\/p>\n
Not.the.same.<\/p>\n
So I had him serve. That too went way over my head.<\/p>\n
I spent time showing him the grips and giving some pointers (re: don’t hit it so hard).\u00a0After I got his a few times, I suggested we just play mini tennis (just hitting the ball lightly over the net). So the hour wasn’t a complete waste but I did say he should take lessons of his own.<\/p>\n
And that’s what he’s doing. He has to unlearn everything he learned playing racquetball but he’ll be fine. And maybe one day we can play again. And I won’t get hit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Did I mention I’m taking tennis lessons? This was my attempt at saying, “suck it junior high tennis coach, I’ll show you I can play tennis!” because yeah, I tried out for the team and clearly couldn’t play. (20+ years later and getting my revenge!) Tennis is big on my mom’s side of the family read more