Balls

One day when I was a little girl, someone organized a game of volleyball and told me it would be lots of fun. I stood there expectantly until I was hit in the stomach with a volleyball. Being myopic, I didn't see it coming. That was my intro to ball games. I didn't enjoy it, and I've never changed my mind.

I can't play tennis, racquetball, volleyball (of course)or softball. I can't bowl or golf. Likewise pingpong--the birdie is an honorary ball, to me. Name a sport--I can't play it.

I've never liked team sports, either. I've never understood them. Someone has the ball and someone else tries to take it away or kill the party of the first part. Or someone tries to move the ball down a field and is assaulted by a bunch of 300-lb assassins who try to prevent his passage. What of it? The finer points elude me.

That is not to say that I never went to a college or high school football game when I had my eye on a cute guy in the game. That doesn't count as watching sports.

My idea of an athletic contest is a game of Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit. I'll even play Monopoly or Candyland, the dumbest game in the universe.

This puts me at odds with half the universe--the male half. I had occasion to notice this when I was with a number of people last weekend. The men kept sitting inside the hotel watching sport after sport, only emerging to ask, "What did you think of Ohio State?" or "Wow, those White Sox." The women went shopping or availed themselves of the cultural and recreational events on offer.

I guess I don't understand men either.