No one will ever mistake me for Anna Kornikova. In any way, shape or form. I’m not a pro tennis player. I’m not bodacious and blonde. I have not been featured half naked in an Enrique Iglesias video. As a tennis aficionado, I rather hate Anna for being popular for all the wrong reasons, but even I can’t deny the fact that she looks pretty hot when she plays the game. And what do I look like when I play tennis? Hot. Literally hot. Sweat pours from every possible part of my body. And yes, it’s sweat, not perspiration. I am not one of those dainty women who perspire. Screw those women and their properly functioning glands.
All of these factors make it a bad idea for me to be attracted to a guy who regularly sees me play tennis. And yet that’s exactly what happened sophomore year of college. All my friend Jess and I wanted to do was go to the free intermediate classes each Monday and try to hone our ground strokes, tighten our vollies, and sharpen our serves. One particular class, I looked around at my compatriots in tennis. The wonderfully cynical Jess was to my left, the kids who were far too good to be in an intermediate class were to my right, and in front of me was our Charles Nelson Riley look-a-like of an instructor, Nick (who it was never proven could actually play tennis). But wait - who’s that? It’s a new kid. A hot new kid. A new kid so hott the word hot actually deserves two t’s.
As luck would have it, Cute Tennis Guy - CTG for short - is assigned to be my rival. We introduce ourselves, I quickly ponder if my first name fits nicely together with his last name, and we’re off to play. I decide my strategy will be to play my best and hopefully impress him. Almost immediately after this decision I whiz the ball past him. And the next ball. And the next ball. And suddenly the main concern in my mind is not whether I should have worn my infinitely more flattering navy tennis skirt - it’s whether I’m intimidating the adorable specimen on the other side of the net.
Flash forward a few weeks to a Wednesday tennis practice in the recreation complex. After about 20 minutes and a decent amount of sweat, I look over to see CTG on the court next door. After a few more stolen glances, I can tell he’s watching Jess and I play between his own points. Then as I’m picking up a stray ball by the mesh curtains safely cutting any flying balls off from hitting an unsuspecting runner, CTG inexplicably comes over to talk to me. I quickly brush off as much sweat as I possibly can and focus on achieving a tone of voice that is somewhere between ‘happy to see you’ and ‘not that I care about you.’ More than likely I just sound confused, but that’s neither here nor there. After a exchanging pleasantries, I hear CTG say something so confounding, it would keep me busy for the next week. I hear CTG say, “When you and your friend hit, you’re very ballish.”
Ballish ... ballish ... ballish? What the hell does that mean? Jess and I discuss the possibilities. I try to stay positive, convincing myself it means he admires the strength with which I hit the ball. But this thought process soon devolves into CTG thinking I hit like a dude, and a sweaty dude at that. I asked everyone what they thought it meant. No one had an adequate explanation and no one thought the connotation of the word was positive. After all, there are few times when variations on the word “ball” and a girl’s name can coexist peacefully in the same sentence without someone’s feelings getting hurt.
I approach the next class with a level of anxiety only previously reserved for final exams. I gingerly approach CTG as though the service line is a fault line under my feet waiting to quake at any moment. I somehow stammer out the question in, well, question: what did you mean by the word ballish? CTG stared at me for an eternity and a half before he decided to answer, “You thought I said you were ballish? I said you two were very POLISHED.”
Cut to me, cursing out the fact that the English language contains so many words that sound alike, especially when you’re dealing with a mumbler such as CTG. Needless to say I retreated, realizing my future with CTG was a no go. You’d think that would be the end of the story, but no, in my life, the end of the story is never really the end of the story. Because of course I had to play against CTG later that class. Of course I decided to take it easy on him, stroke the ego a bit. And of course that plan backfired.
See, all my efforts to go easy on him resulted in a lapse in focus and an accidental crotch-shot. Yes, just a few minutes after confronting CTG about the word ballish, I accidentally hit a tennis ball right into CTG’s ... balls. In the word of Alanis, isn’t it ironic?
