Echoes

One of the benefits of aging is not having to do all the stuff from when you were younger.  One of the consequences of aging is not being able to do all the stuff from when you were younger.

Actually, I could probably still play racquetball, but for a partner or two.  Most of the people I played with have retired, except for this one former teaching assistant; he ended up in the former Yugolslavia after graduate school.  So, that doesn’t look promising.

I liked racquetball because it’s a real grunge sport.  At the UIC campus—and at Elmhurst College from what I saw when Clare attended—it was mostly an afterthought, a row of courts down a labyrinth of passageways in the bowels of the athletics’ building.  It was usually very hot when we played, with the shadows ready to take over as soon as we switched the court lights off.

I especially liked how you could score points by hitting the ball off the ceiling; it made my bad tennis stroke into a formidable weapon.  I also liked the noises—gym shoes squeaking on wooden floor, the ball whacking off one or more walls, shouts of “Block!” and “your point, damnit!”, among others.  I had a tendency to dive after balls and pop back up to wait for the return, so much so that teaching assistant wanted to know why I didn’t stay down.

It was my Rocky moment.