SubscribeRecently I was sitting half-cheeked on a bench at the pickleball courts, fidgeting uncomfortably because the wrought-iron bench presses (no matter which way I turn) directly on my blown hamstring muscle up under my butt, when Gart and Ralph came up, sat down and began badgering me as usual. I admit I usually am comfortable with their badgering because, after all, they are two of the best three or four players in the park, both far better than I, and if they weren’t badgering me they probably wouldn’t be talking to me, being the elitist pigs they are, and, emotionally shallow as I am, I always perceive any attention to be better than none so I take what I can get. But in this case they were particularly annoying, and here’s why.
First, Gart began by asking me why there weren’t going to be open courts available during certain times today. “Now that we’ve got 12 courts (up from 8), we should always have some open courts available!” Ralph chimed in with something equally inane and the two monologues went on unchecked for a few minutes, me not able to get a word in edgewise.
Finally I stopped them and told them the truth as it exists in my world-view. The truth doesn’t matter to this story but is as follows: it can get complicated but we have designated times for open play and during our busy periods at least four courts allocated to that, four reserved courts set aside for those who want to reserve them, and during periods where we are doing both reservations and open play we restrict the round-robins (organized play based on skill level) to no more than four courts. Thus, worst-case scenario, we would have four courts available to virtually any purpose known to man, excepting of course those who may wish to land small planes in liu of flying them into IRS buildings or some such. This can occasionally be superseded by club-sanctioned events, e.g. that very day (to Gart’s question) when we had Sarah’s annual Woman’s Mixed-Level Social scheduled (using eight courts), leaving us only four for the Men’s C Round-Robin and, for two hours, none for open or reserved play, and I was explaining all abut THAT when Ralph leaned over to Gart and asked “Are you getting any kind of an answer out of all this BS?”.
This, of course, torqued me mightily. Here I had actually given credence, if just for a moment, to the idea that they might actually WANT an answer and all they were doing was baiting me…again…and worst of all I bit. I should know better, but my intemperate response was that I was no longer talking to Ralph and was only talking to Gart, and that any further communication from Ralph to me would need to be routed through Gart, and we went on that way for a few minutes, much to their amusement and my continued irritation, until my butt hurt too much to continue and I got up and gimped off.
I don’t know why I waste my time on those two.
Mike 
Ann
You should stick to Fly Fishing.
Mike