We'll Always Remember

Tennis has been heavily on my mind the past few days. Well, actually, it has been on my mind heavily for the past week or so. I'm trying my hardest, without even holding my racket, much less being on a court with another human being, to figure out what my USTA rating would be. I want it to be 3.5. I hope it would be 3.5. 3.5 sounds like fun, it sounds challenging, it sounds like a nice skill set to be working in, and it sounds like I wouldn't be badly beaten every single time. 4.0 sounds on paper like where I might be (hey, I could even make a case for a 4.5...on paper, that is!), but I don't believe in paper. Paper doesn't play matches with real live opponents. So unless forced to do otherwise by someone with more experience identifying placement, I'm going to call myself a 3.5. I've settled on this idea that a pro is going to have to tell me what to do based upon watching me.

So while I've been on this tennis kick, I went to my closet and pulled out my high school yearbooks in hopes of seeing what my season records were my junior and senior year. Unfortunately, that information wasn't available, but I was able to pretty much mesh what information was there with what my brain remembers, which is that when I started, I lost two, and that seems correct--the team's season record was 7-2 that year. I also couldn't remember the names of all six starters that year. As I recalled, our only losses were to the usual suspects, Cox and First Colonial.

But meanwhile, I got lost in the voluminous writing on the back and front pages of my yearbook. I don't know if everyone's high school yearbook is similar, but I had at least one person, sometimes two, claim entire blank two page spreads for themselves. Donna's entry is a cacophony of text, drawing, a combination of the two (her name upside down and backwards written in words), and just sheer insanity. I laughed so hard reading it, although I can't say that I've read the entire thing because it is so non-linear. And here's the kicker: I can't remember what about half of this stuff she wrote means! What I do remember reading her entry and many of the others is that obviously my life in high school was comprised of one personal joke or reference after another with just about anyone I knew. We must have sounded like we were talking or writing in a secret code, because I sure as heck don't know what we were talking about! Here are some of the things that I can't remember:

* Nightmare on ice skates, Part 1 Bobby-obby-obby
* Hey, guess what? I played in the park, but I didn't hear Freddy in the bushes. (although I think I have a guess on this one...)
* Party at J-Man's House! Stay all night--Maki and Mary Frances did! (I don't know who J-Man, Maki, or Mary Frances are)
* The Mystic Order of the Holy Ham (this rings a bell, but what does it mean?)
* Bossy Cow Jokes
* something about SQUIDS from AP English class?
* Lichens. Several people mentioned something about lichens.
* Bitte klopfen and the sacred caterpillar (this was from creative writing class, it seems)
* More than one person asked if I was "naked or was I nude"

There are these hysterical pictures, too, including "A Rare Photo of HELL The Day You Graduated," drawings of Donna and I in our pickle costumes (we honestly had professional photos done with us wearing John Lennon sunglasses and wearing posterboard pickles), and a drawing of me waving my nose hairs at someone. Then there's the occasional totally "out there" comment from someone I knew very well, but I can't imagine making the particular comment they made. There's Joe Kennedy, with his odd little half-calligraphy blurb about incredible person blah, blah, blah stuff, and than at the end adds a "P.S. You really look good in a formal." What's that supposed to mean?! Then there was some joke about "Let me know when you get those sex-improvement video tapes you ordered," coming from Jason Bair. Huh?

Then my very amazing tennis partner, Kalpana, had all kinds of little gems that I can barely attach any meaning to. "Be a Woman." I definitely remember saying that, but not the context. And it seems I had a big thing about "Hit her where it hurts!"

Finally, Tricia left this entire treatise on silence. With a big blank space for it. Obviously, silence seems to have been a big problem between us. Why do I always end up spending time with people with whom this silence thing becomes an issue?

Other notable comments about high school based on my yearbook: I had longish hair, and it was still very naturally blonde. Trish Goodwin is on probably every other page. I seem to have missed getting in the picture for half of the activities I was in. I still picture everyone looking just as they did then.

Back to the present, Frances was fully recovered today. By the time she got up this morning, she was doing running flips onto the mattress in Rutledge's room and she was eating waffles. She tested negative for strep, which is not quite what I wanted to hear, since it means that this was probably a virus, but looking on the bright side of things, at least it was very short-lived. The vomiting phase lasted only 1.5 hours, even if it was a bit intense. And although she had an intermittent tummy ache all day, it didn't exactly slow her down. So I'm hoping that if I am similarly cursed with the illness that it will be as quick for me.

Ollie lost three of four matches today at the wrestling tournament. He was pinned in under 30 seconds by the first opponent, but steadily imrproved as the morning went on. The bye in the second round affected his momentum, I heard; too much time between his first and second match made him lose interest. And his nemesis from last year broke his arm today and will be out for the rest of the season. Not that it makes a difference to Ollie's season, since Ollie has moved on to Midget and Trey is still a Bantam. Since this is the tournament where Ollie broke someone's arm last year, it seems pretty clear that the referees need to be a little more on top of things as far as making it clear when the time is up so that no one shoots an unsuspecting person.

I suppose between not having approrpriate BRAT diet items in our house during a possible stomach virus and just needing food in general, we somehow ended up overdoing the grocery shopping today. We went three separate places, spending a rather large amount at each, resulting in an even more staggering grand total. But now we have so much food that our fridge can barely hold it, and even the garage fridge is feeling the pain. Both Frances and I are highly interested in protein, so we have many nuts and trail mixes and cheeses. Hopefully this will help both of us stay on a more even keel. And I engaged in a rather naughty clandestine shopping expedition of my own, which was probably not the best idea on a day of major grocery shopping and when I haven't checked the balance in our checking account recently. The truth is going to come out sooner or later (I vote sooner), so I hope that my lovely new tennis clothes make Kerry smile as much as they made me. I never did find my missing white skirt, so I had to do something, right?! Now I just have to figure out the answer to this burning question of tennis etiquette: if my skirt is orange/salmon, what color should my shorts/bloomers or whatever you call them be? I hope that white is an appropriate answer!