Behind Roxy & Kylo's New Sport Day
Summers always seemed to go by quickly, even years ago. And the weather didn't always cooperate. There could be stretches of rain and dreary days, followed by days so hot and humid that being outside wasn't particularly appealing. So when we got a nice summer day, it was a good opportunity to get outside and do something. I've always liked being active. Not necessarily adventurous, there is a difference. You are not going to convince me to jump out of an airplane or dive off a cliff in the name of trying something new. But give me an activity I haven't tried before, and I've usually been willing to see what it's about. That's how tennis entered my life.
Someone Got Me to Try It
A friend was the one who first got me interested in tennis. I didn't know whether it was going to become my sport. I wasn't thinking that far ahead. I tried it, enjoyed it enough to buy my own racquet, and we would drive around looking for courts where we could play. I should probably clarify that I never became particularly good at tennis. I'm coordinated enough to hit the ball over the net, and that's about where my qualifications end. I'm fairly certain nobody ever taught me proper technique. Volleyball is probably the only sport I've ever felt genuinely comfortable playing. But with tennis, I could hit the ball back, keep playing and have fun, and apparently that was enough for me.
Once tennis became something I could do, it became one more thing I could share. During those summers, I spent a lot of time with my niece and nephew. I wanted us outside and active, so we'd find things to do. Sometimes it was tennis. Sometimes badminton. Sometimes we'd walk around the track or simply run around. There wasn't some grand philosophy behind it. It was just one of the ways we spent time together. I should probably also disclose that I wasn't above bribery. Dairy Queen and Chuck E. Cheese could be remarkably effective incentives. As my niece and I would later joke whenever one of us was caught contradicting ourselves: Have you ever seen a hypocrite? I never said I was perfect.
The Racquet Came With Me
Eventually, I moved away for work, and that tennis racquet came with me. In that next chapter of my life, tennis became something I shared with someone there, too. They got a racquet of their own, and we played together. I like that part of the story now because I don't remember ever consciously deciding that tennis was something I needed to carry forward. It simply came with me. So did the racquet. And when that chapter ended and I eventually came back, somehow the racquet came back with me, too. After all these years, I still have it. It hangs in my room now. I never became a serious tennis player. I never even became a particularly good one. That racquet has probably spent considerably more of its life hanging around than swinging at tennis balls. But I never got rid of it.
Come On. Let's Go Do Something.
What I didn't realize until I started thinking about this Adventure was that tennis wasn't really the pattern. Doing things together was. These days, I still find myself doing the same basic thing with my nephew: finding something for us to go do together. We bowl. Sometimes we play basketball, where he talks considerably more smack than I do and occasionally needs to be humbled. Whether I am always capable of delivering that humbling is beside the point. And last summer, we tried pickleball.
The activities themselves aren't really the pattern. Some things we do more than once. Some we might do only occasionally. Some turn out to be more fun than others. Sometimes we're trying something new, and sometimes we're simply doing something we already know we enjoy. What feels familiar is the invitation: Come on. Let's go do something.
And Then Came EalaMania
Tennis even managed to find its way back into my life recently from an entirely different direction. This time, I wasn't holding the racquet. We got caught up in EalaMania, watching Alexandra Eala and feeling proud as we watched her represent the Philippines. Suddenly, tennis was interesting again, not because I had decided to become a better player after all these years, but because there was someone exciting to follow and cheer for. It reminded me that the things we try don't necessarily disappear simply because they don't become lifelong pursuits. Sometimes they become little pieces of our lives that turn up again in unexpected ways.
Why Roxy & Kylo Needed a New Sport Day
That's what I love about Roxy and Kylo trying tennis. It isn't Tennis Day. It's New Sport Day. They step onto a clay court with Coach Raffi to try something they haven't done before. They don't know whether they'll be good at it. They don't know whether tennis will become something they love forever. They don't need to know. They just need enough curiosity to step onto the court.
Someone did that for me once. A friend introduced me to something I hadn't tried, and I picked up a racquet. I never became particularly good at it, but that didn't stop the experience from becoming part of my life. I shared it with other people. I carried that racquet with me when my life changed. I brought it home again. And all these years later, I'm still willing to pick up something unfamiliar and see what happens.
Curiosity Matters
I think sometimes we make trying something new unnecessarily complicated. We want to know whether we'll be good at it, whether we'll like it, whether it's worth the effort, whether we'll keep doing it, or whether it's really our thing. But that's asking curiosity to give us the answer before we've had the experience. You don't have to know whether you'll love something before you try it. That's what trying it is for.
And you certainly don't have to be good at everything you enjoy doing. I'm proof of that. There's something freeing about being able to say, I don't really know what I'm doing, but I'm willing to try. Sometimes you discover something you want to keep doing. Sometimes you discover that once was plenty. Sometimes you become good at it. Sometimes, decades later, your technique is probably still questionable. It can matter anyway.
What Stayed With Me
Trying something doesn't have to change the course of your life to become part of it. I never became a tennis player in any meaningful sense of the word. But a friend introduced me to something new. I tried it. I shared it with people I loved. That same racquet traveled through different chapters of my life before eventually coming home with me. Now it hangs in my room. Maybe that's why I still like the idea of trying something simply because I haven't done it before. Some experiences become favorites. Some last for a season. Some disappear for years and unexpectedly come around again. We don't have to know which one it will be before we begin. Sometimes being curious enough to try is enough.
What About You?
What's something you've been curious about trying but haven't tried yet?
