Wednesday, December 15, 2021

Evening out (1 of 2): Tennis.

The week before I moved, I ended up meeting a (politics-careered) friend from college, his elementary school-aged kids, and his girlfriend to catch up over a bit of food, before he took his kids to a professional wrestling event at an arena near me.

I arrived a bit early to the area so I could be ready to meet them whenever they arrived, and I ended up grabbing a beer at a (relatively empty) (black-owned?) (black-clienteled) pizza restaurant/bar a few blocks away from the arena.

There, while I was sitting at the end of the bar having my (overpriced) beer and studying this new-to-me form of script from the ancient language that I've been studying the past several years, I overheard a (younger) (black) guy way down the bar say something to the (vivacious) (skinny) (young) (black) (female) waitress about tennis, like she played tennis.

"So you play tennis?", I was like, when she was walking near me, and she was like, "Yeah."

"That's intimidating," I was like, "I could never do that." 

And, I explained that there was so much going on in tennis, from the serve to running around the court to having your racket at the right angle when you hit the ball, that it seems like "there's a ton of ways to mess up, and it's all on you."

"You're not wrong," she was like.

She also said that she plays at a court from a chain founded by this black celebrity and that she saw them at that location's opening, and she highly recommended that I go see the movie "King Richard," about Venus and Serena's dad and their early lives.

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