Indignation: Righteous or Wrong

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© 2001-2002 R.C. Barajas

t's the bathroom one no one else knows is there because it's so well hidden. One has to go through a glass door, down a narrow hallway, through a sort of lounge area, and find it on the right, past the tidy kitchenette. The tennis teachers tell the kids to use this bathroom because it's faster and safer than asking a kid to go all the way down 4 floors to the locker rooms by him or herself.

Apart from paranoid adult concerns about letting a child wander around a locker room unattended, it is an awful lot to ask a child to carry a full bladder so far, especially when he or she has probably waited until the last possible second to empty it. So the logical solution was the one the teachers chose: use the closest bathroom.

Which is just what Sebastian did last weekend, dutifully, right before his tennis class was to start.

The portion of the tennis area behind that glass door is devoted to Court Tennis. When I say, "devoted to" I really mean "obsessed with". For those of you who are under 100, Court Tennis, or Real Tennis as it is presumptuously called, is a recently revived form of antiquated tennis. It dates back to the Greeks and Romans, and was mentioned by Chaucer, Erasmus, Shakespeare, and a slew of other overly educated sports fans. It is a strange, often unfathomable game that is played indoors on a closed court that has a roof, or "penthouse" off of which one rolls the ball when serving. The balls are hand-made, and much heavier and harder than modern tennis balls. The rackets, or "bats" are kidney bean shaped, and of heavy wood - there is only one manufacturer worldwide. The net dips down in the middle, and there is a gutter under it for collecting balls. The scoring is totally incomprehensible, involving yard-lines, chases and lots of math. The court itself is 1 1/2 times longer than a regular tennis court, and as wide as a doubles court. There are only 10 courts in the US, 2 of them on the East Coast. Only one of the ten courts is open to the public. It is not exactly a game of the people.

I know just a little about it because Adolfo and I were invited to play a few months ago by an avid enthusiast of the game. He was thrilled to include us, and was actually quite adorable. He'd even invited Sebastian to play. He told us candidly that he was not trying to get us to join the Court Tennis club - he just wanted to initiate more players into the sport. He was like a very enthusiastic puppy. We felt favorably disposed toward any game that would garner such a plucky emissary.
We figured out pretty quickly, though, that he was the exception. The next "emissary" we met was a stiff, platinum-haired man in spotless tennis whites with the immediately detestable name of "Haven". I remember his eyes quickly flickering over our grubby non-whites. He had shaken hands and smiled with dazzlingly white teeth, but I had the impression he knew we weren't about to spring for a double membership. Our puppy friend eyed Haven as he walked off and growled that he was a colossal snob. Sadly, he was also president of the club, so what're you gonna do? We left the court, feeling we'd enjoyed our little foray into the elitist past, but would in future be content playing unreal tennis with the plebes.

So back to Sebastian and his immediate need. He pulled open the glass door and tried to enter the sanctity of the Court Tennis area.

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