Pickleball and . . . literature?

 For 75 minutes on Saturday morning I practiced PB with a friend, volleying, serving and returning, and backhands. "Yes! " would ring out in mock triumph as she put yet another slant shot off to one side of the court causing me to run way over there for a weak, lunging return, and then hit the wide-open court as I desperately tried to reverse course and run back into the play. I would hit volley shots at her that would handcuff her between forehand/backhand stabs at the ball and laugh as she quixotically looked at her paddle that had just failed her by trying to return a chicken-wing shot off its narrow banding edge. In between faux triumphs we would discuss Rick Atkinson's fascinating opening volume in the Revolution Trilogy which we both are reading, The Redcoats Are Coming. "Atkinson has a felicity for turning history into literature," says the Washington Post. No score was kept, only momentary scores were settled. I love pickleball.

Sunday, as showers threatened and the sky spit raindrops, I showed up at general PB Drop-In and filled out a 4-some on a water-slicked court hoping to quickly get in a couple of games before a deluge made playing untenable. I thought I was being handy by immediately filling out a 3-some even though our two opponents were half my age and the best players (one by far) of the 12 toilers playing on three courts. The game went quickly as Pen put his wicked spin serve onto the wet court where it sliced wickedly away off the moist veneer of the hard court and weak lunging rally returns were put away decidedly by Player at the Kitchen Line with triumph aplomb. We went up for faux "good game" platitudes at 1-11 and I drolly said, "Work up a sweat, you two?" The losing two of us expectantly waited for Pen and Player to split up with us in some more equitable matchup that would, you know, be more fun but Pen and Player wanted to remain together. Okay. We became a mere ballboy and ballgirl for game two chasing down smashed winners so they could thereupon perform more spectacular kitchen putaways and spin-serves that actually curved wickedly in the wet-laden air from "out" to "in." Quickly dispensing with the false platitudes at the net following the 0-11 shellacking (Pickled!) I kept on going, got into my car and drove home to finish reading my depressing Thomas Hardy novel where the heroine gets hanged for murdering her rapist and her husband, the perfect man, runs off with her sister, equally beautiful but half his age, at the exact moment that poor Tessie is strung up for her "crimes." "'Justice' was done, and the President of the Immortals in the Aeschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess." There was more profit in reading those lines than playing those games. I hate pickleball.