My bachelor pad is in a oversized condo complex called the Mountain Club. Its only outdoor recreation venue (once the pool shuts down on Labor Day) is a pair of tennis courts. They don't get much use, which I think the board is OK with. I have a tennis partner, Marlon, a black guy about a decade younger than me who is hooked on growing his muscles: arms, chest, shoulders, the visible ones. He's like a lot of guys who are into expanding their size with the same inverse intensity that bulimic women care about reducing theirs. I like him because he likes me, and he's a good single parent with a cool kid. But he's not too tolerant of the middle aged Indian guys who play a modified version of cricket on the courts when they aren't in use. He curses them when we are playing and they are around, complains to the board, hates the smell of Indian food from one of his neighbors. Personally, I like seeing people playing sports. The more the merrier, and if you can get half a dozen guys out there P-L-A-Y-I-N-G, that's very hard for me to condemn. They are sportsmen, just like me and Marlon. So I try and play it down the middle, not getting to passionate in their defense, but certainly not looking to evict anyone. Marlon steams, I think he presumes I am on his cricket-hater team, but it's kind of evident that I am not.
That's the background to my Sunday afternoon adventure. I'm puffing up the hill on my bike (it IS the Mountain Club after all) and I see my soon-to-be Indian pals, enjoying themselves immensely playing modified cricket on the tennis court. It reminds me of my schoolyard wiffle ball games from my childhood...improvising rules for the angles of the field. Full disclosure: I have been educated in Cricket, playing a semester at a South African English-style prep school I attended in 6th grade when my Mom and professor stepdad went on their honeymoon sabbatical. So I wandered onto the condo tennis court, and I escaped the aura of Marlon and just started shmoozing cricket, and they knew I was an enthusiastic sportsman, just like them. And after a brief dissolve sequence, there I am BOWLING several "Overs", fielding balls, batting and just sharing sports love as I am wont to do. Fortunately, Marlon didn't cruise by and have a coronary. It was exhilarating...to be surrounded by this cool group of Indians, one with a white beard worthy of Ayatollah Khomenie, a mom and a stroller just outside the gate...cultural sports love.
