Six Walls and a Thousand Angles

I'm trying to learn how to play raquetabll and it's not going so well.  In fact it's going terribly.  The first time I played was on a Friday afternoon and it wasn't enough that I was, well let's just say, humbled by the beating I took.  No, on top of that - and thanks to being improperly shoed, I came away with the skin on the bottom of my foot split like a fissure from which blood and "stuff" leaked out and I couldn't walk for the entire weekend.  I even went to Walgreen's to see about buying some cruthces (they were all too small).  To add to my dilemma and my pain, my wife and kids thought this was all very funny.

I probably should have taken this as a sign that perhaps racquetball and me weren't meant to be, but, I'm a bit harheaded, so I didn't quit.  I got the right shoes, which I was told was the problem, and went back for more pain.  And that's exactly what I've gotten - no wins, but lots of pain.  Not the foot kind though, I've learned that I can go an hour and survive with my foot in tack, the pain I now have is mostly in my brain with a dash in my ego for flavor. 

And here's why.  By all rights, I should be beating the guy I'm playing against.  Sure he's got lots of experience, but I'm younger, faster and stronger (no offense Jim).  In most sports those are advantages.  But the thing that's killing me is not the speed, it's those friggin' angles.  I can't tell you how frustrating it is to see what appears to be the same shot coming toward me and find myself frozen and confused suffering from the failure of my brain to tell my body what to do.  Most times I look like a squirrel trying to cross the road, all kinds of movement but no sense to any it.  And Jim, God please him, somehow manages to hold back laughing at me, at least on the court.  I imagine he gets a good chuckle on his way home. 

I've discovered that the things I lack in racquetball career are anticipation, visualization and patience, or, in other words the skills that are necessary to be good.  And I also suck, for now at least.  But, on a positive note, I get a good workout and I suspect that all of that flailing about I do is at least "heart healthy". 

But I'm not discouraged, in fact I'm just the opposite, I'm optimistic.  Not that I will become the club champion, but that I will train my brain and my body to understand the angles and that I will, one day, threaten Jim with defeat at the hands of my mad skills.  And if that never happens, at least I can take comfort, literally, in knowing that I have the right shoes.