I DIDN’T WANT TO JOIN YOUR STUPID CLUB ANYWAY
So I was thinking about joining this tennis club at Trout Lake Community Centre. I called the contact guy, Murray, a few weeks ago. They still had openings, but he needed to appraise my skill level, to make sure I knew how to play, because most of the players in the club were pretty experienced. After a few days of trying to schedule a time we could meet up for a try-out I gave up. And the weather was mostly crappy anyway.
But it’s been nice out for the past few days, and Murray called me after work today to see if I wanted to hit some balls around and maybe still come out for the club. I had some time before the show tonight, so I figured what the hell and biked over to Trout Lake after dinner. Murray talks with an affectless deadpan of facts and figures. He was wearing a faded white trade-show T-shirt advertising some sort of accounting software, tucked into pleated white shorts. Although Murray would drastically out-play me on the court, I was just as clearly dominating in the style department. He explained in great detail the club policies surrounding ball usage and resuage, (two cans are opened per meet (one per court). At the end of the meet they the sell the used balls for one dollar per can, or sometimes people just take them), and other rules and regulations.
Anyways, we rallied for a while. There was a bit of friction when he asked me to “volley from the net” and I didn’t really know what he was asking me to do. He was unable to explain himself in more detail, and simply repeated VOLLEY FROM THE NET several times, in an increasingly irritated tone. I figured it out.
Afterwards he reported to me that there were aspects of my game he thought were good (forehand, serve) but that my backhand and net game were weak. He hedged around for a while how everyone in the club has a lot of experience playing doubles and strategy and so on. So I didn’t make the cut.
I wasn’t really expecting to want to pay $50 to join the club, but I still felt a little dejected on the bike ride home.