The saddest story ever told

Who knew a basic text could make me cry.

Gathering up a foursome to play tennis doubles, I sent a quick thread to the Tuesday regulars looking for a game. I included the two Bobs.

You know Happy Bob — the no-longer lawyer who no longer has to be in court and spends his long days of leisure on a court — tennis or horrifically pickleball. And Expert Bob who I’m sure has added to his lists of expertise over the last two years — but I don’t know in what field because he hasn’t been playing tennis — so I haven’t had to listen to his latest lectures.

But in general, Expert Bob is full of a metric shit ton of useless information from college tennis players to reloading bullets or gold mining in the deserts of Arizona or the wilds of Africa. It sounds interesting until you hear Expert Bob tell it.

It can be a long wait for the punch line or the point of the story, and we all quickly move toward playing another point in the match. Tennis that is — a sport.

But I invited both the Bobs to try and pry them off the pickleball court. A reminder that whiffles are for small children or the special olympics. That tennis is one of the most popular sports on earth. That it takes some expertise to play.

Happy Bob begged off. Something about a grandchild — TLDR.

Then Expert Bob set a new personal record for his most succinct story:

“I can’t serve anymore. My L2 is shot. I can only handle wimpy pickleball underhand serves.”

Expert Bob

For those of you who have yet to have back trouble, L2 is in the lumbar spine. Those big thick vertebrae that have to bear the brunt of the upper body weight. L2 is toward the top of the big vertebrae, above the waist and in the curve of the lower back.

For those of you who grew up with school shootings, by “shot” baby boomers don’t mean with bullets. We mean our knees or hips or backs are irreparably broken.

If the story of Jesus is the greatest story every told, the story of Expert Bob being pushed off to pickleball in perpetuity by a bulging disc is the saddest story ever told.

Like the Christian picture of heaven is being trapped with your family playing harp music for an ungrateful dictator for eternity makes the weak-minded happy. So the tale of Expert Bob banished to the little court with low tosses and dink shots may make the “pickle ballers” happy.

Before the pandemic of pickleball descended on the tennis crowds, bad backs or knees would make a tennis player adjust. Expert Bob would stop arching his back and reaching behind his head to hit a top spin serve. He’d learn to wrist slap the ball with slice like the rest of the AARP crowd. If that was too much, he’d adopt Larry’s toddler serve and just tap the ball over the net like he’s trying to hang a picture with a nail for the first time.

But now with the artificial pickle, people no longer have to adjust. They can just quit our sport in favor of a game for the lame.

Rational people who love life can only see their own futures in the pathetic steps of Expert Bob shuffling into the sunset holding his lower back with this left hand and carrying a child’s paddle in his right.

It’s one step closer to the Walmart scooter. The assisted living walker. The locked doors of the memory care unit.

The grim reaper with the whiffle balls may be coming for us all, but it’s a sad day when a tennis player leaves this mortal coil and wanders away to the short-bus courts and slappy taps of the tennis impaired.

So long Expert Bob — maybe the short-court players will be happy to listen to your metric shit ton of useless information while playing their pathetic little game. We, the full-court players of a true adult sport, will miss it.