I happen to... do just about anything with the slow, lumbering gait of a man who's never particularly gotten along with sports.
But my friends needed a batter, so I donned (find the pun? It's obscure...) the equipment and hoped I'd somehow get out of having to actually do anything.
No such luck.
But it there was a motley of genders present, we were playing with a tennis ball, and the atmosphere seemed perfectly relaxed. So, at least when I'd inevitably humiliate myself, no one would be cross with me. They'd merely laugh and jeer at me. And that made me feel great.
I tapped the bat against the ground a few times, as they like to do. The bowler looked down her nose at me, and without a sliver of warning she fired her hand-cannon. It caught me straight in the face and I fell backward, narrowly missing the wickets, which I would surely have been impaled upon otherwise.
A few of my teammates came rushing up to check on me, and also, to her credit, the bowler. 'Are you all right?' they asked. 'Are you all right?'
My head ran through all my jokes, and settled on the trite but always well-received:
'Quick! You're losing me. Somebody give me mouth-to-mouth.'
And I'm glad you've stayed with me for the entire anecdote. The establishment's fine. Go there. By all means. read more