Tag: Retired Teachers

Adventures in Pickleball…

When I retired everyone said, “Now that you have all this free time what will you do?” I would stare back at those people and think, “What won’t I do?” This first year of retirement has been filled with new things, solo travel, learning to draw and paint, volunteering, camping and generally saying yes to all the opportunities presented me. So when my “friend” ( and I use term loosely) said let’s learn to play Pickleball I said yes, and then I said, ” What the heck* is Pickleball?”

Using my super-power, “Looking Stuff* Up on The Wikipedia”, I found that Pickleball is, and I quote here… “A paddleball sport that combines elements of tennis, badminton, and table tennis. Two or four players use solid paddles made of wood or composite materials to hit a perforated polymer ball, similar to a Wiffle ball, over a net.” The USA Pickleball Association or USAPA (yes that is a real thing) says it is the fastest growing sport you have never heard of and; in the last six years the sport has had a 650 percent increase in numbers. I love a good trend so I jumped on this bandwagon with both feet.

As soon as I could, I signed up for a community education class with my partner Dan. That first night we walked into the Gym and I knew I had found my people…or so I thought. The crowd was not as blue haired as I imagined it would be, and as luck would have it a couple I had known through teaching was there. At first sight this class was filled with what I considered to be fun people.

Our instructor Coach Carl, was super knowledgable and had been playing for years. He was encouraging and eager for us to love the sport that he adored. Lesson one was mostly Carl running through the basics and us practicing our craft through drills, changing partners often. That Shangra-La was not to be the norm, the next week we got down to business.

After some instruction and drill time Carl said it was time to play. He divided us up into groups; I want to pause here and say I know a little something about grouping people. As a teacher, one is always making groups and naming them. The good group is something like The Blue Birds and the shit group is The Buzzards. It quickly became apparent that Dan was a Blue Bird and much to my dismay I was a Buzzard. I love a good challenge, so right there I decided to work hard and maybe by the end of the night I WOULD be a Blue Bird too. The joke was on me…

The games got started and I could see the Blue Birds out of the corner of my eye. They looked like they were floating on air, their paddles never missed, their serves were low and fast. I hated and admired them all at the same time. Conversely, my group looked like THEY had two left feet and were playing with blind-folds on. I was obviously placed in the wrong group.

After the first game Carl stopped us and we rotated. The winners went to the right and the LEARNERS went to the left. Who was he kidding we all knew LEARNERS was Picklespeak for LOSERS! I moved LEFT again and again, I moved left all night! Meanwhile Dan was always moving right, at one point he was so far away from me I thought he was in another time zone. This was not shaping up to be what I had imagined. Maybe Carl saw a flaw in my play and I was put in the correct group, maybe I was a Buzzard…

Week after week we attended class, Dan, the WINNER, always moving right and me, the LEARNER always moving left. One night we were so far apart I had to Uber home without him. 😦 I was LEARNING a lot but not fast enough. And by the end of the session this Buzzard had NEVER won a game!!! Man that was a crushing blow to my ego…

Somehow Dan talked me into another 6 week class. This time Carl was off in Mexico playing in Pickleball tournaments and no doubt telling tales about the “Super Buzzar” he met the fall before. Our new teachers seemed nice and we got off to a good start.

The second week came and again we were put into groups. This time there were two sets of Bluebirds and two sets of Buzzards. It appeared that I was the youngest and most agile of the Buzzards and if you know me I know what your thinking…no the others did not come with portable oxygen tanks! That second night I actually won a few games. Half of me wanted to jump the net like some Wimbledon champ, the other half was saying, “calm down Billy Jean these people are two decades older than you. As of this week we will be 4 weeks in, and although I’m not a Bluebird yet I have been seeing more wins than losses.

In the end I realized slow and steady wins the race. But I gotta say this Pickleball race feels super long and I am a super slow “Learner”… I am enjoying my new life, and even though I complain I’m always looking for a good game of Pickleball. If any of you see Coach Carl in Mexico tell him I finally won a game!

*You may have noticed two spots in the blog that had an asterisk, this my friends is where I had to edit because the original words were deemed too offensive for Facebook and therefore I was unable to advertise the post. And no that is not a joke!

Dan the Super Bluebird!

The day I used my teacher voice on unsuspecting Japanese Tourist.

When you are a teacher especially in the middle school, there are occasions where you have to use your voice to get attention. Sometimes that means whispering at the children so they have to be very quiet to hear you and sometimes that means raising your voice to a volume that would stop traffic. I have been blessed with what some might call a traffic stopping voice. But as a teacher you can not be a one trick pony so you must learn other skills such as the, stop em in their tracks death stare, the bribe them with a Jolly Rancher move, the ever important shush sound, the finger click and my personal favorite loud whistle.

Once you retire these skills lay dormrat. But they are never far from the surface. I have been known, on occasion, to accidentally shush people in my book club, give another driver the death stare and recently during a family wedding, I whistled quite loudly to get the attention of those gathered to help the photographer get a photo. All fairly innocuous uses of my odd but useful talents.

Those who know me are usually not shocked when these talents rise to the surface, most of those shushed are forgiving and when the desired effect is a result of said talent, say a great family photo, people are even thankful.

The flip side of this coin is when the talent jumps to the surface without me even thinking. This summer my friend and I went to Italy for two weeks. Italy in August is hot, like… hot, as in the surface of the sun hot. We had spent an amazing day buzzing around Rome seeing all we could see. Late in the afternoon we retired to our hotel to take a nap and shower before dinner. As we entered the hotel, to my horror, I saw that a bus load of teenagers had just emptied into the lobby. Having spent 30 years with this type of creature I knew what a hell scape of noise we were about to enter. My experience did not betray me.

The lobby was a jumble of noise, yelling, laughing, crying, burping, you get the picture. Suddenly we realized these teens were on a school trip far from their parents and their homes. We had entered every teachers nightmare a field trip abroad. These young people were from Japan and maybe for the first time in their short lives experiencing the freedom that comes with an overnight field trip with too few chaperones.

I was super on edge but my travel mate and I managed to get to the front of the elevator queue and make it to our room without incident. After an amazing shower I was relaxing on the sofa dozing, when I heard what can only be classified as a jamboree of noise and running. Those little bastards were running up and down the hall playing a raucous game of tag.

The two of us just wanted a little respite, a nap to get us through… But these loud, obnoxious free spirits were harassing our sleepy senses. Without thinking the Middle School Teacher in me sprang to action. I stomped over to the door, threw it open and proceeded to stun, freak out, and generally terrorize a group of Japanese teens. In my loudest voice I screamed, “Hey! This is a hotel, people are trying to sleep, knock it off!” I slammed the door to accentuate my point. My travel companion was stunned for a millisecond and then burst out laughing. Much to our delight for the next hour and a half our hall was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

Now, my travel mate and I did get the peace and quiet we so needed, but at what cost? I suppose life is a trade off; we got our nap but a ton of Japanese teens are now trash talking the rude American hotel guest. Life is a series of trade offs; for a desperately needed nap I’ll gladly be fodder for trash talking teens. Hopefully my teacher skills are just dormant enough to pull out when needed, you know… the next time I need a nap.