The Outsider Athlete

Today my roommate Ethan went to Fred Meyer and bought us each $20 tennis rackets. (I would like to pause here for a minute and point out that I would make Ethan's name a hyperlink, but I can't, because he doesn't have a blog. Or a computer. Or a cell phone. And my blog just now provided a new venue for me to rag on him for this). And some Penn #4 tennis balls. They're the best-selling balls in the world. Even better than Wilson. Who would have guessed.

Over the past few weeks, Ethan, Meri and I each independently, for whatever reason, got it into our heads that playing tennis would be fun, and probably a good thing to know how to do besides. Maybe this was the product of some 25-year-old-pre-30-year-old synapse firing, grooming its host into presentable middle agers prematurely. Maybe our attention was just drawn to all of the free tennis courts in Portland parks that are suddenly occupied, now that the good weather is upon us. In any case, I was very impressed that Ethan took this tennis project from idle chatter to the next, implementable level, investment and procurement of good and all.

On some level, I think I thought there was a chance that I would instantaneously turn out to be the best tennis player ever. The equivalent of an outsider artist. Someone with no real training or background who quickly and unexpecctedly moves from the fringe to the center of a highly regimented skill hierarchy. I think that I always feel a little bit of excitement about this possibility whenever I begin learning a new skill. That my prodigy potential will finally be realized. I wonder if most people feel this to some degree. I asked Ethan about it, and he said yes. But he sometimes has similar megalomaniacal pathies to me, in spite of being a really nice dude. He is also anxious about the number of things in the world. I have a similar sense of the potential for spontaneous celebrity whenever I start to learn anything new, but particularly when it comes to athletics, even though I have never shown any extraordinary gifts in that department. Except for at Ga-Ga, maybe. Nonetheless, I continue to dream.

To be fair, Ethan and I had both had tennis lessons at some point in our youth, including Ethan's attending a tennis camp (one in a series of camps he attended, and hated, including Balkan Dance Camp, wherein the next oldest "camper" was 20 years his senior). In spite of this prior training, and the obvious potential for Outsider Athlete Virtuosity (OAV) that we feel daily course through our veins, we weren't very good. But we'll keep trying.

And right as we finished, we heard the ice cream truck come by