All hail the volley llama
Humor columnist Jan A. Igoe dives into pickleball, the latest sports craze sweeping South Carolina.
Illustration by Jan A. Igoe
It’s always humbling to learn a new skill, especially a sport. Most sports require speed, grace and agility, or in lieu of that, an expensive set of clubs. There are lots of sports to try, but if you are over 40 and your knees are shot, you should steer clear of the ones Red Bull sponsors. Your cliff diving days may be over, but there’s still pickleball.
Pickleball got its start in 1965, when three dads were trying to amuse their mopey kids on a badminton court. They didn’t have enough rackets to go around, so they used ping-pong paddles. Then they lowered the net to tennis height, came up with several hundred rules and the world started playing. The game was named after Pickles, the family dog who kept running off with the ball.
I’m always amazed when someone invents a sport and the entire planet agrees to play it. Once upon a time in England, where ferret legging began, somebody at a pub must have said, “Hey blokes, let’s set some rowdy rodents loose in our knickers. Last mate to bleed to death wins. It’ll be jolly fun.” And everyone at the pub agreed.
At first, no one lasted more than a minute because ferrets have very sharp teeth and don’t seem to enjoy being shoved down a stranger’s pants. But today—yes, men still play—deranged competitors can last for hours.
England also gave us extreme ironing, a sport that combines death-defying stunts with the drudgery of housework. The next time you’re kayaking down a waterfall, bring an ironing board so you can press your clothes while paddling for your life. It’s not clear where they plug the iron in, but adrenaline junkies have defied wrinkles on mountain tops and water skis; hanging upside down on cliffs; beneath underwater caverns and even on top of a cow. No doubt Bessie was as delighted as the ferrets to be part of a new sport.
All the more reason to settle for pickleball, which requires no live animals. Even the competitors were not that lively. Most of us were still slurping coffee with one eye open when some perky pickleball ambassadors arrived to introduce the sport to the neighborhood on Saturday.
You play with oversized ping-pong paddles that are much shorter than tennis rackets, so would-be Serenas like me kept swinging at balls just beyond our reach and using colorful expressions when we missed. As we were trying to chop and dink, we were also learning rules and scoring. Once our brains filled up, we just wandered in circles, swatting at each other.
“Stay out of the kitchen,” the ambassador warned. The kitchen is that whole zone up by the net, not the room I avoid at home. If you strike a high ball at the net, you lose the point, so smashing an overhead down your opponent’s throat won’t help your score. (Not that anyone would do that intentionally unless it was a “bless-her-heart” situation and she really deserved it.)
We learned important terms like flabjack—a ball you can’t hit until it bounces. Your falafels are shots that land short. And a volley llama is a player who hits the ball from the dreaded kitchen. Exclusive jargon is vital to any serious sport.
Pickleball has it all. A small court, affordable paddles, no imminent threat of death, no ironing boards and zero ferrets. Once I suppress my bloodthirsty instincts at the net and figure out where the paddle ends, pickleball and I could be BFFs.
But I still want to volley llama those flabjacks.
Jan A. Igoe is a writer with Jell-O for knees who has never let a lack of natural athleticism keep her from attempting a new sport, except those that include household chores. Share your death-defying adventures at HumorMe@SCLiving.coop.