By Ed Piper
My mission: Substitute-teaching (at prime rates) at Westview High School.
My milestone: Using a racquetball racquet for the first time in over 40 years.
I was pretty stoked, and only as and after I was doing it as a P.E. sub for two days Jan. 27-28 did I realize how far it all went back.
I'm clearly a legend in my own mind.
The first day of subbing, I shot some baskets--having been a bball player in my day, and wanting to regain a little of my touch. (My arms were not powering the ball the way it came naturally for me in my teens and 20's.
Previously, on another subbing assignment, I was asked to act as an experiment guinea pig at Canyon Crest Academy (a high school in the San Dieguito district) by a student doing a survey--it was atrocious! I made two out of 10, where when I was actively playing over four decades ago I was an 80-percent shooter, even higher--120-plus free throws in a row shooting on my own. I was crestfallen and embarrassed.
Then, on my second day in P.E. at Westview, I had the thought: Why not try out some things I haven't done for a while? In the storage shed were racquets (a question I have is why does the word racquet have to be spelled the French way?), volleyballs, basketballs, footballs...
I spent several minutes regaining some semblance of a stroke on a three-wall racquetball court at the far end of the P.E. area I was supervising--while students fanned out doing similar: tennis, shooting baskets, kicking a soccer ball, and the like. I circulated, touched base with many of these ninth-graders, then wandered to my racquetball encounter.
Verdict: I can still power the ball off the front wall with my forehand. My right arm is working. What I don't have, and didn't have back then, is a backhand. I practiced changing the position of my body to align it to stroke the ball with my backhand. That worked a little better.
I recalled, and shared it with someone, how my then-girl friend, who prided herself on her tennis game, was furious after I beat her in tennis some 40-plus years ago. I did it using my considerable reach (I'm 6'5") and my conditioning back then--I was agile and able to dodge and run after balls that she tried to place away from me. Man was she furious! A non-tennis player who beat her. Not good. (That isn't why we broke up.)
Then, getting in the spirit of branching out and practicing long-lost activities, I returned the racquetball and tennis ball to the equipment shed. I grabbed a volleyball and headed over to the four sand volleyball courts in the opposite direction. Kids were still good. I kept an eye out, touched base with them again as needed. (The period was one hour, forty minutes in length, so I had no hurry.)
I picked one of the middle courts of the four, and served four balls--one bad into the net--right-handed. All good, all into the receiving area on the other side of the net. No one there to oppose me.
To make clear, I never played volleyball for a team back in the day. I probably played a little in P.E. as a kid in school.
I took selfies (which I never do) of me with the racquet, me with the volleyball... The basketball, too.
Oh, and in between, I asked a student how the heck to reach across my cellphone to take a selfie of me holding a ball in the other hand. He reminded me that I didn't have to touch the circle on the screen to take the photo--I could also use one of the side buttons for volume to click the shot. See, I told you I don't take selfies!
A good day had by all. Forty-plus years spanned. Amazing.
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