Feeling your age on the tennis court

Occasionally, I’ll start thinking I’m not old. Not really old. Not old like my parents were old when they were my age.

During such times, phrases like “You’re only as old as you feel,” and “Age is just a frame of mind” sift through my consciousness like wind through the treetops, singing their soft, siren songs, until I almost believe them.

But something always happens to slap me back in my place, to remind me that age is not a frame of mind, it is the number of years you’ve lived. In my case, a lot. Sometimes—usually, in fact—that “reminder” is a comment from The Lovely Mrs. Taylor, the one person on earth I can count on to tell me the unvarnished truth, even when what I’m looking for is a heavily-varnished lie.

Other times, a brief encounter with a mirror in a brightly lit room is enough to shake my delusions of youth. Whatever the case, there’s always something preventing me from fooling myself.

This past weekend, it was tennis.

Mrs. Taylor got it into her head that our evenings could be better spent hitting a little, yellow ball around, rather than watching yet another “Law & Order” rerun on Tivo. For my part, I was perfectly happy seeing bad guys get what’s coming to them in 60 minutes or less. But Mrs. T is not to be denied. Not by me, anyway.

So after a quick trip to Wal-Mart to pick up some balls and a couple of the cheapest rackets they had in stock, I found myself standing on the high school’s tennis court. It was at this moment we realized we have no idea how to play tennis.

I’m sure there are rules to the game, but I have no idea what they might be. From years of channel surfing—during which time I have occasionally flipped past a televised tennis match—I know the game involves hitting a ball back and forth over a net.

As to scoring, there’s a “love” thing, I think, though I don’t know whether that means you have no score or that you really like your opponent. And I think you get 15 points every time you do something right or your opponent does something wrong, but who knows. Not me, that’s for sure.

Eventually, Mrs. T and I devised our own set of rules involving moon phases, wind direction, the names of four of the seven dwarves, and frequent shouts of “Noonan! Miss! Noonan!”

In the end, our game of tennis more closely resembled “fetch,” in which the ball is served, the person on the receiving end takes a swing at it with his or her racket, and the ball sails over the fence. Repeat three times (the number of balls we had with us) then go pick the balls up and do it all over again.

Frankly, I’m confused as to why people think tennis is fun.

After an hour of this nonsense, I was panting like Pavlov’s dog in a bell store. I was ready for a cold margarita and an Adirondack chair in a shady corner of my back yard, an activity that—unlike tennis—really is fun.

Mrs. Taylor is convinced our game will improve with time. She may be right. Personally, I’m not planning a trip to Wimbledon any time soon.

More “Reality Check” online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.milive.com. E-mail Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.