Cacoon

I used to be fast. Really fast. This made me quite the athletic foe, despite my lack of strength. To wit, I used to play tennis against my neighbor, the Jimmer, who was a good tennis player. He knew "tennis theory" and had gameplans. He put spin on the ball. He played at the net. He could even serve! But what he couldn't do was hit a ball out of my reach. Because I was fast. Sure, I may hit it out or into the net, but dammit if I didn't get my racket on everything. And that pissed the Jimmer off. So I fanned the flames and trash-talked. If he won? So what? He played tennis more and I sucked. But if I won, oh boy that made the trash-talking even sweeter because I knew he was so much better.

But I'm not fast anymore and I get winded 10 minutes into a basketball game.

Which leads me to this past weekend when I played tennis. The court next to us was occupied by 3 old men and a younger guy. One old man in particular was hunched over and moved slowly. He had a feeble old man voice. And he used it to trash-talk. He was slow, but he was always where the ball was. After putting away a shot and ending a long rally, he yelled, "who do you think you're messing with?" Then he returned to the service line, bounced the ball twice, and asked what the score was. Someone told him it was 40-15, match point. The old man bounced the ball once more, raised it to his racket, and said, "Say good-night Gracie" and let loose a serve.

That's right, I heard someone quote George Burns to talk shit to his opponents during a doubles tennis game. One court over and I'm yelling "take that" and "eat it" and other various witticims like that, and this guy is referencing vaudeville not out of irony, but because he remembers vaudeville. And he wasn't sweating as much as I was.