SQUASHED
ESP ... N
BY N. Mark Castro
When you're 36 years old, you sometimes hear
a small voice inside you that says: ''Just because you've reached middle age,
that doesn't mean you shouldn't take on new challenges and seek new adventures.
You get only one ride on this crazy carousel we call life, and by golly you
should make the most of it!''
This is the
voice of Satan.
I know this because recently, in an exclusive sports club in Jakarta, I listened to this voice, and as a
result my body feels as though it has been used as a trampoline by the Fiesta
Carnivale. I am currently on an all-painkiller diet. ''I'll have a black coffee
and 250 Advil tablets'' is a typical breakfast order for me these days.
This is because I played Squash.
For those of you who, for whatever reason,
such as a will to live, do not participate in such indoor sports, I should
explain that Squash is an activity that is very popular with people who do not
feel that regular living is lethal enough. These are, of course, young people,
fearless people, people with 100 percent synthetic bodies who can hurtle and
smash down a small ball at 150 mph and knock down mature trees with their faces
and then spring to their feet and go, ''Cool.''
People like my brother Manda. He wanted to
switch to Squash, and I thought it would be good to learn with him, because we
can no longer play Tennis together. We have a fundamental difference in
technique: He plays via the Professional Method, in which you hit the ball back
and forth with relative ease; whereas I hit via the Breath-Catching Method, in
which you stand sideways on the incoming ball, looking as athletic as possible
without actually moving muscles (this could cause you to start moving left to
right). If anybody asks if you're OK, you say, ''I'm just catching my breath!''
in a tone of voice that suggests that at any moment you're going to swoop
rapidly out of the court; whereas in fact you're planning to stay right where
you are, rigid as a statue, until the summer arrives.
At night, when the players have all gone home, we Breath-Catchers will still be up there, standing where we were, chewing on our Tennis rackets for sustenance.
So I thought I'd take a stab at Squash, which is quite different from Tennis. In Tennis, you hit the ball back and forth to each other, plus you have expensive rackets that you can poke people with if they make fun of you at close range. Whereas with Squash, you get this one great big wall, which is shaped like the Great Wall of China.
If you run after a ball, you crash to the
ground like a tree and lie there while players swoop past and deliberately
spray sweat on you.
Squash players hate Tennis players. It's a generational thing.
Squash players are (and here I am generalizing) middle-aged Republicans wearing designer space suits; Tennis players are defiant young rebels wearing deliberately drab clothing that is baggy enough to cover the Squash player plus a major appliance.
Squash players like to glide down the indoor wall in a series of graceful arcs; Tennis players like to attack the open court, slashing, spinning, tumbling, going backward, blasting through wind, leaping off invisible walls, getting their noses pierced in midair, etc.
Squash players view Tennis players as a menace; Tennis players view Squash players as Elmer Fudd.
So I took my Squash game with a small group
led by Manda, who also once talked me into jumping from a tall tree while attached
only to a thin rope.
Manda took me up to speed with the game that
offered ideal game conditions for the novice who's going to fall a lot on the
floor, chasing the ball: approximately a tile-covered floor with an
18-foot-thick base of reinforced concrete. You could not dent this floor with a
jackhammer. (I later learned, however, that you COULD dent it with the back of
your head.)
I learned Squash via a two-step method:
STEP ONE: Watching Manda do something.
STEP TWO: Trying to do it myself.
I was pretty good at Step One.
The problem with Step Two was that you had to
stand up on your feet, hit the ball, and wait for it as the other player hits
it with the same velocity of Hurricane Katrina, which turns out to be a
violation of at least five important laws of physics.
I'd struggle to my feet, and I'd be wavering there and then the Physics Police would drop a huge chunk of gravity on me, and WHAM, my body would hit the concrete floor, sometimes bouncing as much as a foot.
''Keep your knees wide open and anticipate the return!'' Manda would yell,
helpfully.
Have you noticed that whatever sport you're trying to learn, some earnest
person is always telling you to keep your knees wide open? As if THAT would
solve anything. I wanted to shout back, ''FORGET MY KNEES! DO SOMETHING ABOUT
THESE GRAVITY BALLS!''
Needless to say, my other friend had no trouble at all. None. In minutes, she
was cruising happily down the volley of balls; you could actually see her
flying and getting higher and higher as she hit for those balls up in the air.
I, on the other hand, spent most of my time lying on my back, groaning, while
space-suited Republicans swooped past and sprayed sweat on me. If I hadn't
gotten out of there, they'd have completely covered me; I now realize that the
thick walls you see on Squash courts are formed around the bodies of
36-year-olds who tried to learn Squash.
So I think, when my body heals, I'll go back to playing Squash.
Maybe sometime you'll see me out in the Court, catching my breath, standing
still. When that happens ...
Please .... wake me up.
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