Imaginary Pat 1--Society 0--11/3/2006

Disclaimer: The story you are about to read is 100% true—up to a certain point. This point in the story should be abundantly clear to anyone who knows me and how I generally interact with people. From that point on, I have created a fiction that keeps both the story and my image interesting.

Today, as is almost always the case when I begin a story, I was walking around Athletic Park—the only place in Newton where interesting things happen on a fairly regular basis. The temperature, according to the Weather Channel, was nice, so I decided I should get a little half-hearted exercise that would, if nothing else, get me away from the god-awful Technical Writing book that I am drawing a presentation from for my class next week.

It didn’t take me long to realize that, beyond the temperature, I should have taken a moment to see what the wind was like. While it was in the 50s and should have been light jacket weather, there was a stiff breeze in the 20-30 mph range, which made for some slightly chilly conditions, especially since I’d gone the light jacket route. The first half of my walk, aside from being breezy and chilly every time I wasn’t enjoying tree cover, was wildly uneventful. It was so uneventful, in fact, that I considered turning around out of sheer boredom.

This is, unfortunately for my physique, the way most of my exercise has been going lately. I get extra-special tired of doing it almost immediately after starting, quickly find some excuse—usually the weather since it’s never perfect in Kansas—and promptly turn around to find something more interesting to do. As always, I was wearing my headphones and trying to use music to keep me distracted.

After I finished my first lap of the park, I fought against the urge to call it a “better than nothing” effort and head home, and I pressed on. As I neared the tennis courts, I noticed a couple inside, tennis rackets in hand, having a rather heated argument about something or other.

Athletic Park’s tennis courts are interesting because they are almost 100% handicap inaccessible. An imposing, fifteen-foot-tall chain link fence completely surrounds the two tennis courts, and on two sides there is an “overlap gap” between the opening in the main fence wall and a second section that was placed about one and a half feet further outside the main fence and which extended about two feet beyond the break in the main fence. The effect is that an entrance to the courts is created that doesn’t leave any open holes for balls to fly through. As I said, however, the gap is only about one and a half feet wide, so it’s impossible to get into the tennis courts unless one is conveniently mobile—I say “conveniently” because people with other walking aids probably couldn’t pass easily through either. Some people, of course, will say, “Handicap people don’t NEED to get onto tennis courts anyway.” These people are probably jerks.

As I approached the squabblers, I inconspicuously scrolled the volume down on my fancy digitalated musiculator, which was in my pocket. According to my way of thinking, there are two types of people in the world. The first type of person will wear a piece of interesting, high-tech, or expensive technology in a very conspicuous place—on an arm, around the neck, on the forehead, somewhere people are bound to see it. The second type of person will do just the opposite, stashing the item in a pocket or somewhere equally hidden. Also according to my way of thinking, the characteristics that encourage people to treat their electronics this way are clearly indicative of other social tendencies.

The first group of people is the type who wants to be noticed. They are, as I like to call them, the Happen To people because they want things to happen to them. They will impose themselves on the world in such a way that it and its inhabitants have to react—positively or negatively really doesn’t matter, it’s the attention that matters, though positively would obviously be preferred. If the world fails to react, these people will come up with new and unusual ways to make an impression. Motivations for this urge are obviously widely varied but usually due to the fact that daddy didn’t love them properly.

The second group of people is the type who doesn’t want to be noticed—or the Happen Around people. These people also have their share of psychological problems (oddly, daddy didn’t love them properly either), and their motivations tend to vary from shyness to a preference to watch what’s going on in the world. For the latter, watching is actually more interesting than participating. Their rationale is simple. To’s will usually end up with stress induced ulcers or heart conditions or stab wounds. There is little to no danger of this happening to an Around. It might be somewhat less interesting, but it’s endlessly safer.

So, I stuck my hand in my pocket and lowered the volume on my electronic device, to better allow me to eavesdrop on the conversation.

The fact that they were out there to play tennis at all struck me as odd. Having taken up tennis this past summer for about ten trips to the courts, I was all too aware that outdoor tennis in Kansas is, at best, an optimist’s sport, and the wind today would have challenged even the most optimistic person’s outlook on playability. The couple were in their mid-40s, I guessed, and it took no more than five spoken words from them for me to discern the primary motivator behind their being there in the first place: alcohol. Since it was only 1:00 in the afternoon, I was pegging these people for a pair of To’s out trying to inflict themselves on the world.

“We should have brought him along,” the woman stated, firm in her tone if not entirely in her stance.

“Of course you think that. That’s what you always say! Sometimes I don’t even know why I bother,” said the man as he wobblingly stormed over to his side of the court.

I was instantly intrigued. Was this a pair of Alphas struggling to gain just one iota of dominance over the other? Was there another man involved and jealousy clouding the judgment and words of the arguing man? I felt as if I should slow my pace slightly to take in as much of the conversation as I could, but they didn’t seem that interested in continuing at the moment—possibly because there was no more to be said and possibly because their brains were working on inebriatime—so I continued on and, in fact, sped up slightly as I passed so I could make another loop that much quicker. They had to have just arrived shortly before I passed since I’d walked past the courts not ten minutes earlier and nobody was there, so surely they’d still be there when I came back around.

Just before I was out of earshot, I heard the woman add, at considerable volume, “Sometimes I wish you didn’t.” This, of course, infuriated me. Not because of the injustice of saying something so rude, but because I hadn’t heard if this was a much delayed response to the man’s earlier statement or a rebuke to some new assertion.

My mind raced with possible explanations for what they said and questions as to why they were there in the first place. What could possess a person to play drunk tennis in the middle of a chilly, windy afternoon? What kinds of weirdness were these people up to if they were available and in full possession of all the requirements for drunk tennis in the middle of a chilly, windy afternoon?

As I rounded the trees and the tennis courts became visible to me, I stopped for a moment to assess the situation. They were still there, and they weren’t even bothering to stay on each other’s end of the court anymore. They were face to face—in each other’s faces, in fact—on the man’s side of the court, carrying on their argument. I couldn’t see the man’s face yet because he was facing away from me, but, based on his physique (I was a little surprised that he’d been able to fit through the narrow opening to get into the courts in the first place), I was pretty sure it would be beet red and maybe there would be a few veins pulsing aneurismly.

I didn’t turn my music down because I’d been too distracted to turn it back up after I passed the first time. The wind was coming from their direction, so I was able to hear what they were saying slightly better than I would have otherwise. I walked slowly and tried to figure out what they were arguing about.

“I think I do love him more than you!” she said accusingly. This was, indeed, looking very juicy.

“Fine. You can have him then. I don’t need either of you!” the man retorted. I could almost see his face now. The back of his neck, at least, was definitely beet red. I wondered if I was going to finally get to see my first exploding fat man head.

“I will. It’s not like you’ll miss us. And you won’t have to make the monthly trip to the vet anymore either. Won’t you just love that.”

Ah. Hell. It was about a dog. Goddamn dogs. Instantly, the conversation became not only disinteresting to me, it became repugnant. These people were inflicting their loud, stupid argument about bringing a dog to the tennis courts on me and everyone else in the park (there were no other people in the park that I had seen, except two or three cars driving through to who knows where).

My attention temporarily diverted from the couple by my immense disappointment, I noticed a sign on the side of the tennis courts that I hadn’t seen before, which prompted me to walk up to the edge of the cage.

“Excuse me,” I said. They both turned to me with an incredulous look in their eyes, as if I had just walked up to one of them, backed my butt up and farted against his or her thigh.

This is, I think, one of the most curious and extraordinary aspects of human nature—the notion that “privacy” should be afforded people who are doing very private things in very public ways in very public places. Obviously, these two thought I should be minding my own business, even though their volume—and, admittedly, my own curiosity and busybodiness—had done everything it could to make this impossible. This spurred me on even further.

“What the fiddlesticks do you want?” he asked. Obviously, he didn’t say “fiddlesticks,” but I firmly stand by my belief that strong curse words just don’t belong in humorous stories unless their use is, in itself, amusing. And he certainly wasn’t amusing, at least not intentionally. “Mind your own fiddlesticking business,” he urged, spit bubbles forming quickly on the corners of his mouth and just as quickly detaching and slicking up the chain-link fence between us.

“The courts are for playing tennis only,” I replied lightly. I pointed to the sign, which he couldn’t read because it was on the outside of the fence, to help clear things up.

To this the man flew into a rage. Well, not exactly “flew,” more like “rumbled.” It was like seeing a snow-capped mountain motivating itself to erupt molten death on the nearby towns. You knew it could cause a great deal of damage, but there was no hurry, really, to get out of its way. He flowed his way to the edge of the fence, and I saw that I was correct in assuming that his face would be red. In fact, it only further established and served to extend my earlier metaphor in my mind. I wasn’t too worried. Not only did I have a fence and a narrow exit between us, there was always a chance that his head-sized heart would explode from the exertion. He let forth a slightly intimidating little growl, which could have been gas build-up.

“I was only trying to help,” I said. “They fine for that type of thing, you know.” I backed slowly away from the courts, trying to keep an eye on him in the off chance that I’d have to make a run for it. I knew, even if he freed himself from his cage, I’d still be able to outrun him (even in my current shape).

As I crossed the street and returned to the path, he did, in fact, free himself from his cage, but he saw the lead I had on him and quickly resigned himself to the fact that I was out of his catching distance. He compensated the only way he could, he threw his tennis racket at me.

The racket had some pretty impressive velocity, but a combination of bad aim and the wind veered it well off course and it splashed harmlessly in the river behind me. This elicited a fresh batch of curses involving words like “freckle” and “shasta” and “coconut” and “poo.” I picked up my pace, but as soon as I was out of view of the courts I rounded back, figuring the cover of the trees in the park was among the safer places to be when a maniac behind the wheel of a car is looking for you.

I couldn’t resist sneaking back around to get another view of the courts, to see what the aftermath of my encounter had been, and I was a little pleased to see the couple hugging in the middle of the court. Apparently, the introduction of a common enemy had rekindled some kinship between them. Then they began to fondle each other and I knew that I had seen quite enough private acts for the day.

As I rejoined the path a block or so away and headed home, I stuck my hands back in my pockets and turned the volume back up on my music. I could feel the warm glow of a job well-done beginning in my stomach. I had succeeded in doing my good deed for the day, or at least that’s what I could tell myself since nobody’s heart or head exploded.