My New Sport?

I exercise regularly but I’m not that big into sports. I did watch some volleyball in the Olympics. But I wasn’t so interested in the volleyball that I would have watched it without one of the teams being American. If I were ever to play against any really good women’s volleyball team I would get killed. I don’t mean that figuratively speaking. I mean I would get injured (or more like “wounded”) by a fast-moving, spiked volleyball and die as a result. I can just see myself being rushed to the hospital where I would be pronounced dead. They would list the reason for death as “extreme volleyball trauma”. I may be pronounced dead at the volleyball court. I might not even make it alive to the hospital.

I mention volleyball because a few days ago a friend at work, Anna, asked me if I wanted to play some casual volleyball. I asked her; How casual? She said that the players were a group of adults who got together once a week to get a little exercise and have some fun. Anna said that the only reason they bother to keep score was to know when to quit. It sounded good but I wasn’t convinced. I could still see myself taking one in the head and being knocked goofy, or goofier than I already am. My game is golf which isn’t saying much since I have been on a driving range once, and played miniature golf about five times. But I had the best score of my two friends the last time I played miniature golf, and I once hit a golf ball at the driving range 200 yards. I was pretty impressed with myself after that hit until the guy hitting balls next to us said that it is amazing how much farther a ball will travel when there is a thirty miles per hour wind pushing it along, and the ground is rock-hard. I’m still figuring that 200 yards is 200 yards.

Anyway, I was still hesitant to play volleyball with my friend because, like I said, I have this aversion to being hit in the face with a spiked ball flying downward like a meteor. Then Anna told me that they have unusual rules for their game. Under their rules no one can hit the ball over the net while jumping. At least one foot has to be touching the ground. To sort of counteract this rule, the court is longer and even a little wider than a usual court. It supposedly makes for a game with more movement, and less getting hit in the face by a volleyball going the speed of a bullet. Another difference was that no one cares how the ball is hit. Open hands are okay, just so long as a player doesn’t obviously catch the ball. I finally agreed to play.

Well, this game was actually fun. A lot of the fun had to do with the people, who played pretty hard, but joked around too. I liked the idea that I apparently could not do anything klutzy enough to get yelled at, because I did some pretty klutzy things. In fact, they asked me to come back.

So anyway, I think “my sport”, golf, might be replaced by this strange form of volleyball, just so long as no one ever yells at me for messing up, and no one ever expects to see a star player named Heather.