Day 4

I heard from Rebekah on Sunday. She's doing well. I don't have many details to share, except that the spiders are really large, and it was sunny when she arrived.

Because she's not here to listen to me ramble, here are some disjointed thoughts on racquet sports.


This semester I have started playing squash with a friend, marking one more step toward permanent cultural snobbery. I get the impression that most squash players think their “sport” is as distant from racquetball, which I still enjoy, as the NBA from wheelchair basketball. In reality, little separates the two. Both result in serious eye injuries, knee pain from the constant starting and stopping, and dislocated shoulders from the violent collisions with the wall. The only major differences are the speed and size of the ball, and the court design. In squash the ball is a small and absorbs a lot of energy, making wild swings a common occurrence if you’re not used to the lack of bounce.

Both also give the athletically challenged an opportunity to play a racquet sport that requires considerably less skill than tennis. Perhaps winning competitively in either would prove just as difficult, but for amateurs, squash offers the considerable advantage of zero nets.

I think one of the reasons I have enjoyed squash so much is that it’s not a team sport. When I play basketball or soccer, much of my time is spent apologizing to teammates, and telling blatant lies like “I’ll get it next time,” knowing that I won’t be getting anything. Some also claim that it is an excellent form of exercise. While doing research in order to learn the rules of the game, I stumbled several times upon a decontextualized quote that squash was voted the healthiest sport by a mysterious authority. This doesn’t make sense to me on a few fronts. Besides the common injuries cited above, wouldn’t sports like soccer or basketball where one is running at least from one side of the field/court to the other be a better workout than spasmodically stutter-stepping within the confines of an 18x30’ room?

Perhaps the study was conducted in Europe. Apparently England has a particular passion for squash, in part I’m convinced, precisely because of the lack of running. Finally, they’ve found a sport where ideally one could stand in the same spot, slightly shifting a few feet to catch stray balls, and still label it exercise. Running can be reinstated to its original purpose: rioting before, during and after soccer games.