Tennis Anyone? Um…anyone?

Is there a reality completely void of prejudice, ultimately objective and universal? If so, who runs that? Who decides? The majority? God? Roger Goodell?

     It is my contention that there is no such thing as reality. There are only fluid moments open to interpretation and subjective experience. A car crashes. Fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand people watch it. Ask all of them what happened and you get an equal number of postulations and guesses. Why? Because reality depends. It’s not constant. It exists in memories and experience, and those phenomenon are flawed and human and cursed. 

     This is what I think when I yell, Out across the tennis net at Whitey.

    “Out?” Whitey.

   “That’s what I said,”  Me.

     “Gotta be honest, it looked in.”

     “Sorry. Out.”

     It could have been in, I didn’t see it; it was moving too fast. Whitey’s first serve is a freakin’ rocket. But, if I have any chance to win, I need a few breaks, and, so far, I can’t get near his first serve. Second serve, maybe. 

     He moves back to the service line and tosses the ball into the rising sun. His second serve is squishy and I run around a backhand and unload. Down the line, point. Who says cheaters never prosper?

     I’m on vacation with several of my best buddies and wives. It’s a Spring-splash milestone birthday celebration, and we saved for months for this experience. Whitey is my buddy from high school, and he and I decided to get up early and have some vacation-recreation on the tennis courts at our resort.  Except it stopped being recreation after the first serve of the first game and is now a blood feud. We play serve-and-no volley tennis. One, maybe two, strokes per point. Either he hits his first serve where I can’t get away with calling it out, and I lose the point, or I get his second serve and have a chance. I swing exclusively for winners, so it’s either in the net or my point. Either way the rally is over. Manly tennis. No white shorts, no wrist bands, nobody jumps over the net. Whitey has white calcium sweat streaks on his t-shirt and gym shorts. I play in a Hawaiian shirt, and basketball shoes (I plan to throw both in the ocean if I lose).

     On the court behind us an attractive couple plays their own game and works very hard to ignore us. It can’t be easy, we’re conspicuous. They wear white tennis-looking clothing and proper low-rise kicks. They hit backhands and volley at the net. Neither one has lobbed a second serve or taken a two-fisted baseball swing at the ball….boooring.

     After about an hour and a half of manly tennis, set, match, vacation-long point comes up. One last chance for greatness and The Rocket has the serve. 

     So here I go again. “Out.”

     “What!?” My gambit wears thin.

     “Out.”

     “Looked in.” Whitey stands at the net with his hands on his hips, chin juts forward, lips thin.

     “Out.” All my chips are in, it’s game point and bragging rights after all. I can see in his tight grin that this isn’t sitting well. Small price to pay…I didn’t even hear that last one. Sweat and last night’s libations cloud my vision. My shirt is probably ruined. I know my knees are. Have I mentioned I can’t breathe?

     Second serve is soft and I let one rip, leave it all on the court; this one either breaks the ball, the net, or the strings on his racket, period…there will be no more shots in this torturous tennis match. I catch it with a weak open face and watch it sail high. This park won’t hold that one, and back-back-back it’s GONE!! Instinctively I drop the racket and go into a home-run trot. I just lost the match…but I won the World Series.

     Whitey watches it go. “Game, set, match”. The ball leaves our court and hits the fence behind the couple who were, until recently, enjoying a nice game of tennis. The chain links ring out as the guy’s in mid-serve. He whacks his serve into the bottom half of the net. The Mrs. jumps giddily. Game, set, match herself.

     Whoops. 

     I meet Whitey at the fence that separates our court from theirs. I offer my most apologetic shrug, a four-year-old who tossed a football in Mr. Wilson’s yard.

     The guy’s hands are planted on his hips (much like Whitey a minute ago), and he hasn’t moved from where he faulted. Then slowly he walks to my shiny yellow Penn 3 ball, picks it up, shows it to me between his index finger and thumb, like it’s a snotty tissue. He raises his eyebrows as if to ask, Is this your ball? 

     I nod enthusiastically, “Yeah, thanks, lil’ help partner.” 

     He tosses the ball lightly in the air, and hits a wonderful underhand lob over everything…in the wrong direction. Back, back, back again.

     The ball follows an impressively high arch and lands in a patch of heather that missed the latest mow-job by the resort grounds crew.

Whitey smiles.