If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? (5 page)

I stood up exhausted. “How does that work again?”

“You grip your racket against the ball and firmly force it to the inside of your left foot. Bending your knee, you lift the ball to about six inches off the ground and drop it. When it bounces, you continue bouncing it with your racket until you can pluck it off the ground and into your hand.”

Gripping the racket, I forced the ball to the inside of my foot where it rolled over the foot and toward the net. I cornered it and started inching the ball up my leg, but lost my balance and fell into the net.

Approaching the ball once more I accidentally kicked it with my foot and, in a crouched position, I chased it to the corner of the court, slamming my body into the fence.

For the next fifteen minutes, the elusive little ball moved all over the court like it had a motor in it.

Finally, I leaned over, grabbed it with my hand, placed it on my leg and supported it with the racket.

“Okay,” I shouted, “I picked up the ball.”

“That'll be all for today,” he said. “We'll spend a few more weeks on this before moving along to hitting the ball.”

I put my arm over his shoulder, “Now, let me tell you how to pick the towels off the bathroom floor. You simply bend your body in the middle, grasp the towel firmly between...”

He was gone.

Rotten kids. They shouldn't be allowed on the courts. I got a theory about these kids who play tennis anyway... You know the ones. These little tiny kids who sit around swanky tennis courts in a pair of dollar-ninety-eight tennis shoes with the strings knotted, holding a tennis racket, made in Tijuana and sucking on an ice cube. When they are invited to play, they squint and ask, “What do you call this thing again?”

The adults are amused. “A tennis racket.”

Then the kid really starts to perform. He giggles as his pudgy little hands cannot hold two tennis balls at the same time, so he places one on the base line. He has to be told where to stand and his form is somewhere between Art Buchwald and a bullfighter with bad eyes.

After the warm-up, the personality of the kid changes. He scoops up the ball with the back of his foot, aces his opponent on every serve, runs around the court like a wood nymph, jumps the net to offer his condolences and asks for a towel.

My theory is they're beings from another planet who aren't children at all. They're forty-nine-year-old tennis players who have the body of a six-million-dollar man.

They get on my nerves almost as much as Debbie Dominant. Debbie has always been a pace setter. She was the first woman on the block with wheels on her garbage cans and chewed on her sun-glasses three years before Marlo Thomas.

Two years before tennis became “in,” Debbie appeared at the supermarket flushed and breathless in a tennis dress up to her tan line and white tennis shoes with a little ball fringe over the heel

“Isn't this terrible?” she said, pushing her white hat back on her head. “I was at set point and before I knew it the dinner hour was upon me and I just buzzed in here before I could change. I had no idea I'd meet anyone I knew. I'm simply MORTIFIED!”

If she was Lady Godiva riding a power mower she couldn't have been less obvious.

Within weeks, every housewife in the neighborhood was in tennis dress not only while pushing her shopping cart around, but wearing it everywhere.

At school one afternoon, I passed a housewife in the hall who was headed for the office in full tennis attire. “Excuse me,” I said, “But the girl's rest room is out of paper towels.”

“Why tell me?” she asked, nervously fingering her sweatband.

“You had 'HEAD' on your T-shirt, and I figured you were a rest-room attendant.”

“You're obviously not into tennis,” she said stiffly.

That was the day I succumbed. I have been “into” tennis now for six months and was named Miss Congeniality in the Varicose Open.

Although my form still needs work (the body, not the game), I am proud to report I have made progress.

To begin with, I have finally mastered what to do with the second tennis ball. Having small hands, I was becoming terribly self-conscious about keeping it in a can in the car while I served the first one. I noted some women tucked the second ball just inside the elastic leg of their tennis panties. I tried, but found the space already occupied by a leg. Now, I simply drop the second ball down my cleavage, giving me a chest that often stuns my opponent throughout an entire set.

Next, I have learned how to stall, thus throwing my opponent's entire game off. It's called the old tie-the-shoe trick. When your opponent is ready to serve, simply drop to your knees, untie your shoe, rearrange its tongue and tie it again.

Baseball players use the old stall all the time. (Recently, Pat Zachry swallowed his chewing tobacco and threw up against a dugout wall. I haven't mastered at what hour I can throw up yet. Sometimes it is during a return.)

Another play is the rearrange the string number. Never take the rap for a bad return or no return. Whenever you hit a ball into the net, or miss it entirely, bring the game to a grinding halt by checking the strings of your racket, spending sometimes as much as five minutes separating them and testing their strength. This absolves you of any of the responsibility for a bad shot.

Forget all you have been told about concentration. It's overrated. Often, when there is time during one of my lobs, I yell across the net, “Your zipper is open,” and have not only been ignored, but soundly punished, for my good deed.

Probably the greatest accomplishment this year has been my skill at learning how to run around my backhand. Early in my tennis career, I used to think when a ball landed to the left of me I had to use my backhand to return it. I have since learned that anything is better, including straddling a fifteen-foot cyclone fence.

No doubt about it... every day in every way, my game grows stronger. I saw one enthusiast the other day playing with his racket out of the press. I'll have to try that.

5

Profile of a Martyress

When the martyresses of our time are being immortalized, there's no doubt a shrine will be erected to the mother who holds down the home-front while her husband travels.

This courageous woman who single-handedly battles magazine salesmen, juggles car pools, stands up to TV repairmen, and whose deft fingers can find a fuse box in the darkness.

As with most heroines, there are few who are appreciated in their lifetime. One cannot possibly understand the awesome responsibility they shoulder.

That is why I should like to nominate overworked, underpatienced, unappreciated Lorraine Suggs... Mother Martyress.

If any of us walked for a week in her wedgies, we might have the following story to tell:

Monday she went to a parent-teacher conference alone to be told her son stole paper towels from the rest room (the girls'), wrote an obscene word in the dust on Mr. Gripper's car, and was flunking lunch. She said her husband traveled a lot and the teacher said:

“You should be glad he's working.”

On Tuesday, the dog got hit by a motorcycle, the house payment got lost in the mail and her daughter tried to crush a tin can with her hand like the Bionic Woman and required a tetanus shot. She told the doctor her husband traveled a lot and he said:

“You're lucky you have a car.”

On Wednesday, the television set blew a tube, the car developed a wheeze and she had to cancel a night out with the girls. Her mother-in-law said:

“Be thankful you have children.”

On Thursday, she was making a left-hand turn in her VW Rabbit, when a car plowed into the back of her. As she sat there crying softly, “The rabbit died... the rabbit died...” a police officer stuck his head in the window and said:

“You're lucky lady. No one got hurt.”

On Friday at the supermarket, so bored she was carrying on a conversation with a broom display, she went through the mechanics of shopping... lashing one kid to the basket, getting another out of the bean display where he “found” a hole in a bag of pinto beans, and on finding the third had eaten an unknown amount of fruit, offered to weigh him and anything over fifty-three pounds, pay the difference. The checkout girl in noting all the convenience foods said:

“You're lucky to have your husband gone a lot. At least you don't have to cook big meals.”

On Saturday, she car pooled it to the Little Leagues, two haircuts, one dental appointment, baton-twirling lessons, the cleaners, the post office and a birthday party. As she started the power mower at dusk, a neighbor yelled over the fence:

“You're lucky. At least you get out of the house.”

On Sunday, she dragged the brood to church. The baby chewed up two verses out of the hymnal, one child followed a rolling dime all the way to the altar, and the third stole a sponge from the Holy Water font.

The minister stood at the door, smiled stiffly and said:

“You should be thankful the good Lord is looking after you.”

Profile of a Martyr

When the martyrs of our time are being immortalized, there's no doubt a shrine will be erected to the man who must leave the comforts of his home and travel.

This courageous soul, who sits around airports waiting for a glimpse of O.J. Simpson, and misses his plane because a security buzzer keeps picking up the foil on his gum wrapper.

This saint of a man, who spends hours in hotels trying to locate the switch that will give him light, who adjusts the shower so that it directs the spray INSIDE the tub.

As with most heroes, there are few who are appreciated in their lifetime. One cannot possibly understand the frustrations they shoulder.

That is why I should like to nominate overworked, underpaid, unappreciated Tom Suggs... Father and Martyr who makes his living attending conventions.

If any of us walked for a week in his shoes, we might have the following story to tell:

Monday: He checked into the hotel, which has no washcloths, a refrigerator in the bathroom growing penicillin... a balcony that faces a brick wall, a TV set that gets extension courses in math from the university and an air-conditioner-heater with a broken thermometer. There are no light switches. When he summoned the maid she said:

“You should be glad you're not next to the hospitality suite.”

Tuesday: The hotel is a floating ark with two of everything, including elevators. There are five hundred and twenty-five rooms and fifteen hundred conventioneers. The meetings are scheduled in the Promenade room, which is on the mezzanine between the third and fourth floors and is serviced by elevator no. 1 between the hours of 3 and 4 a.m. No one knows this. He complained to another conventioneer, who said:

“You're lucky. I made it to yesterday's meeting.”

Wednesday: After two days of conversing with chests that say, “Hello there, my name is illegible,” he tries to call home only to find the hotel operator is unlisted. He walks to the desk, places the call and waits for fifteen minutes while his preschooler goes to “get mommy,” five more minutes while she coaxes the baby to say, “Hi Daddy,” and another twenty minutes listening to a report on how his house died due to his negligence.

The operator observes:

“You're lucky she puts up with you.”

Thursday: His luggage still hasn't arrived, but there is a tracer who suspects it has never left the airport at home. As he sits in his room, trying to heat up a “rare” hamburger on a TV set that is flashing math equations, the phone rings and it is a sloshed buddy from the hospitality suite shouting:

“Hey, buddy, this beats cutting grass, doesn't it?”

Friday: He sits through five keynote speeches, comparable only to waking up in a recovery room and being asked to applaud. He still cannot find the light switch. The maid says:

“You're lucky. A man's wife down the hall arrived unexpectedly and found his light switch at 2 this morning. She nearly killed him.”

Saturday he took two taxis full of clients to dinner at which a record was set for carrying on a conversation without saying one thing that was worth repeating. He called his wife again, who said:

“Thank God you have adults to talk to.”

Sunday: As he calls the desk to tell them he is checking out, they inform him his lost luggage is on the way in from the airport.

As he throws up his hands, he inadvertently finds the light switch in the navel of the cherub lamp at his bedside. As he stands in the rain waiting for a cab, a driver splashes mud all over his suit. The doorman says:

“You almost got hit. You're lucky the good Lord is looking after you.”

6

“Have a Good Day”

The expression “Have a good day” was born the week our oil supply was depleted, water became scarce, telephone rates went up, gasoline was in short supply, and meat, coffee and sugar prices soared. It was as if the warranty on the country had just expired.

“Have a good day” was something to say.

Ecology became a household word. My husband became a nut on recycling. Until a few years ago he thought recycling was an extra setting on the washer that tore the buttons off his shirts and shredded his underwear. Now, he sits around making towel racks out of oversexed coat hangers.

My daughter poked her head in my kitchen one day and told me my ozone was in trouble.

“Give me a hint,” I said. “Has the antifreeze leaked out of my car? Are my sinus cavities ready to crest? Or did someone flick their Bic near all the papers stored in the basement?”

“I'm talking about aerosol cans,” she groaned. “I'm not going to use them anymore and you shouldn't either. Are you aware that Congress is drafting a bill that will include a ban of spray cans using fluorocarbons?”

“I wouldn't have gone so far as to take it to Congress,” I said.

“Mother! Surely, you've seen first-hand how the fluorocarbons in pressurized cans can harm the atmospheric layer that screens the sun's radiation.”