#145. Tennis (Friday, October 22, 2004)

What was your best day…of solving a problem with a new group of friends?

David Yang was in my grade at Lisgar, lived in my neighborhood, and was overall a pretty smart and cool person. So, naturally, it took me a full month to realize that the big, quiet Chinese guy on my morning bus was actually my schoolmate.¹

Our friendship kind of stayed at the same passive, mostly undeveloped level through all four years of high school. But during freshman year, David did include me in activities with his much denser local friend group. And I was thankful for that, since I was still at the stage (which I never really left) where hanging out with friends outside of school was a rare, special occasion.

During our first few bus chats, we learned that we both liked to play tennis. So, on this Friday, as soon as I get home, he calls to invite me to play tennis with him and his friends—at the court about a twenty-minute bike ride away. Cool.²

And when I arrive, there’s a whole group there. Besides David, there’s Edward, Chris, Henry, and Doug. Doug was actually a close (early) childhood friend, but we had lost contact in the last three years. So, seeing him there instantly turns the day into a minor crossover of old life and new (which I irrationally love, #47, #9).

The six of us alternate doubles and singles across the three courts. We’re all at a comparable skill range, except David has a wicked serve that is almost impossible to return. And there’s an easy camaraderie among the old, new, and very new friends I’m hitting the ball and trading light trash talk with.

After an hour or so, Edward and Henry leave. Then, after another thirty minutes, the remaining four of us pack it up as well. But as we approach the gate, we notice it’s locked from the outside. And none of us have the key.

David, Chris, and Doug instantly know this was Edward’s sadistic idea. We spend thirty minutes just standing on the court, deliberating on how to get ourselves out. (Somehow, yelling for help was not the preferred solution among four teenage boys who’d just completed an intense tennis session.) And that is my favorite part of the day.

Eventually, we decide that one of us will have to escape the fenced enclosure—unusually high for a tennis court, at least five meters, I recall—to unlock the gate from the outside. And Doug is the only one brave enough to do so. He climbs the fence, gets what he calls a “major sacking” as he crosses over to the other side, then climbs down and frees us from having to spend a cold October night sleeping on the marked pavement.

After this day, I see Doug and the others maybe a handful more times, and our friendship also never grows from there. But for that half hour of apparent crisis, we shared a bond that extended just a bit beyond tennis.

In fairness, we had gone to different middle schools, and he wasn’t in the Lisgar Gifted program the first year.
I’m initially annoyed at this, because I had just rented the recap videos for the Blue Jays’ 1992 and 1993 World Series championships and had been anticipating watching them secretly without my parents home. But I figure this would be fun too.