Mary and I sit on the front porch of our new home in Franklin, North Carolina. We have a view of a thick green forest capped by reddening clouds. Occasionally, we spot deer and wild turkeys trespassing on our lawn, and one evening, we heard a bear rummaging in our outdoor trash cans.<\/p>\n
We are part of an exodus of aging couples who have relocated here from Florida. Tiring of record heat waves, hurricanes, and floods\u2014not to mention Governor DeSantis\u2019 Nazification of the state\u2014we decided that Florida was no longer a place to spend our golden years. Now, as we sip iced tea on our porch and watch the setting sun paint the clouds, we feel a sense of peace and arrival that is practically alien.<\/p>\n
The silence is so compelling that I am hesitant to speak, so I am caught off guard when Mary asks me a question. \u201cTell me,\u201d she says, \u201cwhat\u2019s with all this pickleball you\u2019ve been playing lately?\u201d<\/p>\n
Pickleball, a cross between tennis and ping-pong, is played with paddles and hollow plastic balls on a twenty-by-forty-four-foot court. The game, which includes a partner, requires an underhand serve and its objective is to score eleven points on your serve before your opponents do. Pickleball is easily the fastest-growing sport in America. It is quicker than tennis, as explosive as football, and more addictive than crack cocaine, and I have been playing it twice a week at Franklin\u2019s community center.<\/p>\n
I am taken aback that Mary is no fan of pickleball. I say, \u201cYou do Mahjong and I do pickleball. If you ask me, that evens things out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh really?\u201d says Mary. \u201cWhen you come back from pickleball, you\u2019re utterly exhausted. You take a three-hour nap on the couch, which kills the rest of the day. On the days that you attend pickleball, I feel like a pickleball widow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mary has given me something to weigh, but there is a heavier issue here. After all, a man needs an outlet to satisfy his primal instincts. If we had come here a couple of centuries ago, I\u2019d have hunted bear, chased down wolves, and maybe fought an Indian or two. But lacking the athletic challenges with which Daniel Boone was blessed, I\u2019ve been forced to embrace the frontiersman in me by playing pickleball.<\/p>\n
\u201cTell me,\u201d says Mary, \u201chow did that sport get such a ridiculous name?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the guy who invented it named it after his dog. The dog, whose name was Pickles, kept running off with the ball.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I\u2019m a widow to a sport named after some stupid dog.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s only a name,\u201d I protest.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, it\u2019s a pretty asinine name.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s still much to be said for pickleball,\u201d I reply. \u201cIt\u2019s being played all over the country\u2014they even play it in prisons. People of all persuasions get together for pickleball. And no one argues politics\u2014they just whack the ball and have fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you telling me you play pickleball to forget about politics?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d I say, \u201cbut you can\u2019t think too deeply on a pickleball court. Grip your racket tightly on impact with the ball, hit the ball below your waist when it\u2019s your turn to serve. That\u2019s all that occupies my mind when I\u2019m playing pickleball.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHave you any idea how obsessive that sounds?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHey, I only play twice a week. Most of the folks at the community center play it every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s rather sad,\u201d says Mary.<\/p>\n
I shrug. \u201cMost of them are retirees who don\u2019t have much else to do. It would be a whole lot sadder if they sat on their butts doing nothing all day.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, what\u2019s your excuse?\u201d says Mary. \u201cYou just published your seventh book. Why aren\u2019t you as excited about your book as you are about pickleball?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBooks take forever to write,\u201d I say, \u201cand they take even longer to market. I\u2019m more into instant gratification, and pickleball gives me that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cInstant gratification?\u201d says Mary. \u201cDon\u2019t you have to win for that? You tell me you lose almost all your matches.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m getting better,\u201d I say. \u201cI\u2019m deepening my serve. Only yesterday, I hit six service winners\u2014there\u2019s gratification in that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, I\u2019m sure there is,\u201d snorts Mary.<\/p>\n
My palms are starting to sweat.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy approach shot is also improving,\u201d I mumble, \u201cand I\u2019m getting more height on my lobs. At my rate of progress, I may one day qualify for the Macon County Senior Games.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Games, a fifty-five-year-old-and-over competition, are held annually at the Franklin community center. Sports include badminton and horseshoes in addition to pickleball.<\/p>\n
Since Mary is still not impressed, I am forced to expand my case. I say, \u201cIt\u2019s been sixty years since I last hoisted a championship trophy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you talking about that wrestling tournament you won in military school? That tournament where only four schools competed and you scored a couple of pins? My god, will I ever hear the end of that?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s worth reliving,\u201d I insist. \u201cIt was one of my proudest days.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe it would be more to your credit if you didn\u2019t relive it all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, if I don\u2019t rekindle that memory, no one else is going to. And a memory that precious should live in history.\u201d To emphasize my point, I quote from An Athlete Dying Young<\/em>. \u201c\u2018And early though the laurel grows, it withers quicker than the rose.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou and your poems,\u201d Mary sighs.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s that supposed to mean.\u201d<\/p>\n Mary swirls her glass of iced tea, and the ice cubes rattle like bones. \u201cI\u2019ll tell you what it means,\u201d she says. \u201cI can live with you playing that silly sport if it\u2019s keeping you in good health. But if you become the Senior Games pickleball champion, don\u2019t show your trophy to me. That has to be the lamest accomplishment I ever heard about.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell, excuse me if I don\u2019t stay a pickleball loser.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ll be less of a loser,\u201d says Mary, \u201cif you don\u2019t win the Senior Games.\u201d<\/p>\n I feel a thin veil of sanity stealing over my mind, and despite myself, I am forced to concede that Mary has a point. But her logic compares too poorly with the primitive joys of the game: the musket-like pop of a groundstroke, the plunge of a deadly lob, the yelp of a vanquished opponent when the ball is slammed at his feet.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAll right,\u201d I say to her finally. \u201cI\u2019ll settle for runner-up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If we had come here a couple of centuries ago, I\u2019d have hunted bear, chased down wolves, and maybe fought an Indian or two. But lacking the athletic challenges with which Daniel Boone was blessed, I\u2019ve been forced to embrace the frontiersman in me by playing pickleball.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":20865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3809,2997],"class_list":["post-20864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-pickle-ball","tag-retirement","writer-james-hanna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20864"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20866,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20864\/revisions\/20866"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}