Getting Served

(posted by Dave - written 9/20)

...as in getting my (behind) served to me on a silver platter, that is. Allow me to explain. A couple of weeks ago, Johnny (another American here at Xihua) mentioned to me that many of the teachers in the English Department met every Friday for badminton, and last week was the first day that I was around and could come along. There were some racquets sitting in a back closet at our apartment along with a few birdies, so I dusted them off and trooped out to the university gate to meet everyone and head on over to the gym at a neighboring university.

I guess my first clue that the Chinese take their badminton a bit more seriously than we do should have come from the birdies. No stamped out plastic imitation feathers here - nosiree! Real bird feathers of some kind painstakingly trimmed and hand sewn together and inserted into a (likewise real) cork. My second clue came when I met Fred, one of the Chinese teachers in the department. Fred was dressed in warmup pants and had a genuine custom shoulder bag that he carried his racquets and gear in. I don’t know if any of you ever gone bowling and had someone show up with their own custom bowling shoes and their own bowling ball with their name lovingly engraved on it, but that describes the sinking way-out-of-my-league feeling that I had in the taxi on the way to the gym quite accurately.

A word or two may be in order on my badminton heritage at this point. Actually two words: seventh grade. Yes, that, to the best of my knowledge, was the last time I can recall ever playing a serious game of badminton. Those few people reading this blog who know me from my days at Orion Middle School will guess that by “serious”, I mean that, knowing that everyone was watching me publicly humiliate myself, I seriously prayed that at least one of my serves would make it over the net. Didn’t happen.

Okay, fast forward back to a sweaty gym on the Northwest Campus of the Sichuan School for Traditional Chinese Medicine. I don’t know what happened between seventh grade and now in the badminton department, but I am happy to report that, even without any badminton practice whatsoever in the intervening twenty-nine years, my skills have greatly improved. Except in the serve department. I’m playing doubles, we’re smashing that birdie back and forth, I’m diving to recover long shots, playing hard against the net, making spectacular saves, and getting the serve over the net... ummm....one fourth of the time? Oh, and did I mention that I’m playing with both the Chair of the English Department AND the Dean of the college of Foreign Languages?

No matter. They graciously let me have two tries each serve. Mildly humiliating, but I’ll take all the help I can get. I had fun, got some exercise, and had a good meal afterwards. (And the chair of the English Department showed me a cool backhand spin serve that I think will be killer. I’m going to practice trying to serve to our TV set every evening this week)

Note: Did I post this already? Things are blocked blocked blocked, so I have no way of checking. Apologies for any redundancy (redundancy redundancy) this may have caused...