From the Archives: Racquetball Report #4: TERRY TRIED TO KILL ME!

[We’re a bit busy and out of sorts this week, so we’re pulling out quite an old post from 2007; it’s an old favorite and Lisa’s father, the “Terry” in question, always got a hoot out of it when it came up.]

Thanks in large part to these racquetball blog posts [look, it was a different blog and a different time; I wrote about learning to play racquetball -ed.], Terry (Lisa’s father) has expressed an interest in playing together when he came out to help with Lisa’s chemo recovery. “How nice,” thought I, “a little guy bonding with my quasi-kinda-father-in-law. Surely great strides in mutual understanding and respect will result from this adventure. Why, in the afterglow of the manly rites of physical contest, we might just come to see one another as family!”

History is rife with stories of fathers who disapprove of their daughters’ choice of mate. They’ve imprisoned the daughters, smothered them, had the men assassinated or transported to Australia… but never, NEVER, has a father tried to cause a fatal brain hemorrhage in the erstwhile boyfriend with a well-placed racquetball.

UNTIL NOW.

Ok, maybe it wasn’t that bad. 😀

We went to Bally’s and hit a few warm up shots, then I graciously (graciously!) allowed him to serve. Well. His first few hits were no great shakes, and in fairly short order I was up by a handful of points and I was starting to go easy on my serve; no reason to embarrass the guy, I figure. Well well well well well… turns out, he just had to get adjusted to the difference in equipment between racquetball (with which he has minimal experience) and squash (which he has played twice a week for 30 years). Even as he still missed shots, it became clear that he had no problems at all getting to the ball, nor with hitting wickedly-difficult-to-return shots of his own. He kept the score within four or so as we climbed up towards 15.

Then WHAM! An explosive “pop” sound in my ear; my eyes start spiraling, full-on cartoon style. I drop to the floor, trying hard not to frighten nearby children with the classic Eastern European blasphemies that I’m rightly famous for. I shake it off and, although I still can’t hear out of that ear and my equilibrium is roughly the same as a 250-pound infant’s, I finish out the first game, 15-11 or so. We pause for water, then he serves up the second game. By now, he’s really getting his sea legs under him (and, of course, blood is slowly filling my eye sockets, making it difficult to see). The score stays closer, although I lead by a point or two for most of it, but around the 11-point mark he takes control and closes me out 15-12.

Despite my survival instincts screaming at me to hide in a tree somewhere, we will play again on Saturday. I still can’t hear properly out of my right ear. Pray for me.

[Terry passed away early on Friday, April 4th. He went out as close to how he wanted to as any person ever gets to, for which we are grateful. And for the record, while we never played racquetball again as stipulated in my life insurance policy, we got on quite well.

George Eliot tells us that “our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them.” By that measure he’ll be sticking around for a long, long time.]