Thursday | Racquetball with Stefan

On Thursdays, I play racquetball with this guy named Stefan. He's a physics major, parts his hair on the side, and we always play really close games of racquetball. We usually always go to a third tiebreaker game and the score is usually very close. I don't know how many times I have won or he has won but it's probably close. It's nice to know that we are basically at the same level of skill. It's nice having someone else wear those silly glasses with you too.

Stefan usually hits it through the little gap on the back wall where people can observe. He doesn't do it on purpose, but he is very good at hitting it up there unintentionally.

We usually play a little over a hour. We've gotten faster as the semester has progressed so instead of playing best of three games we play best of five and we usually have to go to that fifth game for tiebreaker.

Stefan is a little more outgoing than I am. He always initiates the conversation as what time we can play next. I usually just nod my head and say, "Yeah, that time should work for me." I am a much better at emailing when trying to be social. Usually, I'll throw in a little joke here or there just to lighten the mood because e-mails should be funny, not serious. No one ever gets a bland letter in the mail from someone they know.

Racquetball is a weird sport. It's not tennis, which I was getting comfortable with, and it's not baseball, which, for me, naturally takes over the natural fundamentals of any other game. Racquetball is weird because I combine both tennis and baseball into it. I have to move around, lightly on my feet, like tennis, but I get to smack it like a baseball. So my best shot is a ball waist high, where all I do is it hit it like a baseball, top hand and all. It smacks the bottom of the wall and scoots across the floor.

You don't talk much in racquetball and if you do it is hard to hear. Racquetball courts echo like no other.

That is the main event on Thursdays. That is, until racquetball is over and then "The Office" is my main event. It could be my lab for "Environment and Humanity" but, you know, who looks forward to going to class? Especially a two-and-a-half hour one?