I have another tennis tale that starts out with blog envy. My friend David will often send me emails about what he would write about that day if he had a blog. (He’s a good writer and he’s perpetually peeved – two traits that make for good blogging – but for some reason he’s satisfied with simply sending his rants directly to me.)
He wrote to me the other day about how he screwed up his shoelaces because when he pulled the dark load out of the washer and transferred it to the dryer, only one shoelace made the transition. The other remained in the washer and was re-washed with the whites (in bleach) and is now all blotchy and ruined.
There are so very many questions this story begs, but I got stuck on the obvious one: Who washes shoelaces? Ok, maybe some do, but who washes black shoelaces?
David explained to me that it wasn’t so much that the shoelaces were dirty, as they required freshening.
This statement alone could confound me into the next decade if not for the fact that I’ve played tennis this year with some of the tidiest women I’ve ever met. On Fridays, there is a near mutiny over who gets the hoppers*. And then I feel as though I’m surrounded by a group of horses at the starting gate, all waiting for permission to run and pick up the courtsworth of tennis balls we’ve just bashed around.
As for me, I am able to watch a dishtowel drop from my counter and then step over the crunckled heap of it littering my kitchen floor indefinitely. I don’t feel compelled in the least to pick it up. I’d like to think it’s because I’m a feminist, but I’m afraid it’s just because I’m a slob.
My best tennis performance ever was the day that I mistakenly understood Laura the Tennis Pro to proclaim that the winners of the next game would not have to pick up balls at the end of the clinic. I played my ass off. Then I discovered she’d said something else entirely and she was genuinely confused about why I was jumping up and down about winning a tennis drill. More confused still about why I was lollygagging around while my clinic-mates were busy collecting up our mess.
My mom used to call me Messy Jessie. Well, maybe she didn’t, but she should have. I have no business playing tennis with the neatniks on Tidy Friday. And I should probably eschew shoelaces altogether.
*a hopper is the basket that you use to collect the tennis balls.
