Wednesday, June 20, 2012

DAY 329: ADULT CAMPER

    I never went to sleep away camp for the whole summer.  I went for a week, maybe 2 max.  It was nothing like in the movies, with the boys’ cabins on one side of the lake and the girls’ on the other.  There were no midnight swims or boat rides to go meet members of the opposite sex.


     But I did go to tennis camp, where things got a little spicy, and I went there recently—within the past 5 years.  My ladies tennis team took advantage of the 2 for 1 special pricing at John Newcombe’s Tennis Ranch in New Braunfels, Texas 2 years in a row.  Campers affectionately call the place Newk’s.  Anyway, from November to February, Newk’s offers 2 for 1 pricing, because that’s when it’s cold in Texas, which means that’s when it’s too cold for the country club ladies to be playing outside in the dead of Texas winter.  (My team plays out of what I like to call a faux country club—there are no dues.  We are definitely not those prissy country clubbers who have ball boys and pros who squeegee the courts for us after it rains.  We have to get our own balls, our own water and we have to dry the courts after it rains by ourselves.)     
     Texas doesn’t get that cold for anyone who’s lived east to condone the use of the phrase “dead of winter.”  Unfortunately, on the February trips we made to Newk’s it was pretty miserable outside and I played most of my tennis gloved, in several layers, including a fleece jacket.  I also wore a wool hat.  (One’s grip on the racquet isn’t that good in gloves, even if those gloves have grippers on them.)
     My second year at adult tennis camp, a men’s team was there too.  We met them on the drill courts and may have even played some “live ball” with them.  Then at night we hung out with them at the bar and during karaoke.  Newk’s is known for its karaoke.  Most people stick around the ranch and that’s where they end up after dinner.  By the end of karaoke, one of the girls on my team was sitting pretty cozy with one of the guys on the men’s team.  The next morning I heard he’d walked her back to our cabin and given her a good night kiss. 
     That’s great good for her, right?  Umm, no, not right.  Definitely not right if he was married.  I learned all this after the fact.  Knowing what she knew, my team mate invited her kissy friend to be on our mixed doubles team.  Then I learned they were dating, but on the down low, because he was married.  Apparently, he was separated but still technically married and may from the sound of it have even been trying to work things out with his wife.  So that’s how that guy rolled—kissing other women besides his wife and possibly trying to get back with his wife.  Hey, if you don’t really like one, why not keep her around and bring someone else into your life of confusion? 
     All of this made me a little green.  I’m not into adultery and even though I’m not certain this was adultery, it felt fishy to me.  Fishy and queasy are not how to I like my extracurriculars.  I don’t want the drama of someone’s failing marriage and his new found lust for one of my team mates unfolding on the tennis court.  I’d rather focus on the game.  As a result of these moral standards, I told the captain I wasn’t interested in being on the team’s roster for the next season.  I’m not sure exactly how it turned out for those 2 star-crossed tennis lovers, but all signs point to that woman on my team still being single.  And to that I have 3 words: but of course.  
 

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