I was running for office at the time and despite a busy schedule, decided that my mental health could use the activity. Besides, this was a way to meet voters, right?
It had been over a decade since I’d played volleyball and it was with a women’s indoor league. Frankly, I’d given up on the entire “coed sand volleyball” scene back in the nineties after becoming irritated with the level of competitiveness and ball hogging displayed by the male species. Women are simply more nurturing and more likely to share and play nice.
But hey, that was then and this was now and I thought it might be fun.
It wasn’t really.
For starters, this was actually a competitive league. And while I wasn’t nearly as in shape as my friend, I still retained some basic skills learned from having played all through high school. She didn’t have the benefit of previous coaching and was forced to learn on the job. After the first two games, which resulted in dirty looks and muttered comments from one of the male players, she’d had enough. This is one of the things I love about strong women.
You see, every time she made a mistake, there would be silence. Not a “hey, that’s okay, you’ll get it next time” or a “no worries, we know you haven’t played before and you are doing great” shout out to our fellow teammate. I'm pretty sure I wasn't nearly supportive enough, but in my defense I was trying to avoid bringing unwanted attention to any of the mistakes (which is how I would've preferred it) and I was taking guidance from her cues, which were perfectly strong and independent.
By the end of the second game, she simply said “I’m done”.
She taught me something in that moment: if something so simple, so unnecessary to the quality or your life or to someone else’s life is causing you discomfort then simply eliminate it. When we talked later she explained “I don’t HAVE to play, I didn’t HAVE to help them out, and I don’t HAVE to be treated like that.”
Amen sister!!!
Like an idiot, I kept playing since I’d paid for the session and still needed the exercise and the votes. You see, politics teaches you to meet as many people as you can and to impact as many people as you can, all within a very short window of time. I was certainly about to impact them.
Another friend named Kim, who had also played volleyball at her own high school, stepped in to finish out the session. She is a quiet, reserved player and never shows emotion. I could learn a thing or two from her.
The remaining games of that first session ended on a positive note. Kim and I had seemingly shown enough skill that they asked the two of us to play another session. I should’ve quit while I was ahead.
At some point in time during the early 2nd session games my serve started to get a little goofy. To be completely honest, I’ve always struggled with my overhand serve. There may have been moments of brilliance in high school, but they’ve faded into a long distant memory. I had spent the last several years working with my daughter’s young team using a volley-lite ball. This, combined with age and time away from the game, had left my overhand weak and ugly. As a result, not wanting to humiliate myself and/or hurt the team, I chose to use an underhand serve just to make sure it got over. This had served us well during the first session (no pun intended).
Then came THAT night; the one I’ll most likely never forget. In hindsight, it was kind of like the brakes going out on a car heading down a narrow mountain highway. Once the connection between my brain and my arm was severed, there was no way to pull out of it.
I couldn’t get a single underhand serve over. Some of them went to the side…others fell short of the net. I started to look like some odd version of Steve Urkel attempting to dance a slow jam. I can only assume it was extremely unattractive by the look on the face of one of our male teammates. That look became more irritated as the evening wore on.
Then he muttered. It was uncomfortable. Kim didn’t hold it against me. In fact, most of the folks on our team had missed serves. It was the ugly consistency of my misses that was so, well, remedial. I couldn’t even get an underhand serve over!!
The irritated male teammate wasn’t amused. I could feel his contempt and after the first set I made it a point to start in the middle back position, praying inwardly that our rotation wouldn’t make it all the way around to me.
The rest of my game was fine. It was the darn serve. There was simply no coordination, no logical reason, and no connection between my brain’s directives and my right arm. I tried not to say anything. Then I apologized. Then I cursed. Then, when there was nothing left to do, I laughed maniacally. I think that just scared everyone. Hell, I scared myself.
The rest of the team reacted coolly to me…there were a few quiet murmurs of “don’t worry about it”…but HE was pissed. Between the 2nd and final 3rd set of the night, he approached me and asked if I wanted some help. We’d never shared more than five sentences in the two sessions I’d been playing but in light of how he had treated my friend before and in light of the disdain I could clearly see he held for me, I snapped “Are you going to be nice about it?????”.
It was then I saw that he didn’t realize how his body language had been coming across. He appeared taken aback, and said “well, yes!”.
So I replied “then absolutely, I clearly need all the help I can get”.
By then it didn’t matter. My brain and arm were in full blown shutdown mode and refused to even participate in mediation.
I tried reverting to overhand, but it wasn’t happening. Not on this night. There was obvious pity on the faces of the opposing team, adding insult to injury. I could’ve handled all of that, but for some reason the frustration HE felt with me bothered me the most. I was tempted to scream “do you think I don’t freaking realize how dumb I look? Do you think I'm TRYING to miss these serves?” I was tempted, but kept my big mouth shut. What would have been the point? It was Just. One. Of. Those. Nights. End of story.
As I walked to the car with Kim, she chuckled quietly and said “don’t worry about it, my serves don’t all go over either.”
I love strong sisters.
The ugliness didn’t rear its head again in the same manner, which is to say there were no more “serving shutouts” for me the rest of the session. I found myself breathing a massive sigh of relief when my serves made it over (and could see the others doing the same) and then, sadly, praying we’d get a side out so that I could move out of the serving position. It was all very uneventful, but served as a reminder (again, no pun intended) that 1: I don’t like playing volleyball with boys and 2: no vote was worth that humiliation.
And just in case you were wondering, I wasn’t asked to play with them again. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why.
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