Field
Notes - Dispatch 28 – Desert Outpost, Palm Desert, California
Thursday,
January 28, 2016
Greetings
Fellow Adventurers!
Against
the advice of others more wise than myself, I have become a
participant in a sport called Pickleball. This is a sport in which
you let people who should be ensconced in retirement homes hit ridged
plastic balls at your head as hard as they can. Over the years many
of these desert devils have developed astonishingly accurate forehand
strokes that can accelerate the balls to speeds approaching the
velocity of light. When enough of the balls impact a victim’s
head, rendering him unconscious, they yell with glee, “I pickled
that feller!” Hence the game’s name.
Often
the ambulance drivers who administer to many of us unconscious new
players simply refer to us as Dills, as in “Dill, can you tell me
what day it is?,” while shining a pen light into our eyes to
determine the extent of concussion we have suffered. I have been
pickled so many times that everyone at the clubhouse calls me Dill.
For a while I thought they were just being friendly until I noticed
they were rolling their eyes and nudging one another in delight. I
hate them.
Not
only is the game brutal, the score keeping and knowing who is serving
and why, requires the cognitive skills of a particle physicist.
Needless to say, I don’t qualify. I am, therefore, always in the
uncomfortable position of having to ask what the score is and whose
turn it is to serve. For instance, someone who is about to serve
might shout 6-5-2 and then hit the ball as hard as hard as they can
right toward my perplexed face. I am still trying to figure out what
the numbers might signify as the ball craters into my forehead. Yep,
you guessed it, I have been pickled again. Just call me Dill;
everyone else does.
You
may be wondering why I continue to show up three times a week to be
targeted by people with such deadly intent. Well, I paid the club
dues of ten dollars and I want to get my money’s worth. Besides, I
signed up for this rodeo and it is not the cowboy way to give up. In
Idaho we are made of sterner stuff than most folks, although
intelligence is not necessarily part of the mix.
My
new strategy is to first purchase a catcher’s mask. Then I am going
to dump lots of gin into the court water dispenser. And then I am
going for the sympathy vote and tell them that I lost my hearing
while saving a drowning cat and they need to tell me the score on
every serve. That should just about do it. Once I can stay on the
court for fifteen minutes without being removed on a stretcher, I am
going to develop my own blistering stroke and then it will be payback
time. Even though most of these people are one or two decades my
senior, I will be merciless and victorious (victory music playing in
background as I write). Of course, I will still have to learn the
other rules of the game, like what all those painted lines on the
court mean and what is up with the fish net separating the teams, but
those are challenges for another day.
Well,
I have to stop now and go get ready for our weekly cooking class. I
wonder what I will learn today. I certainly hope the recipe does not
call for pickles. I have had quite enough of those.
