Playing Like An Infant On Quaaludes And Reinjuring My Pinky With A Handshake (AGAIN!)

Sets 306-307:

Stuart v. D. at Austin High. Winner: D. 6-2, 6-0

My Mojo: So Low There's No Place To Go But Up.

I just cannot put out my right hand to shake at all for a while. I keep re-injuring it by putting it out reflexively and having people's grips crunch it back to where it is hurt again. I stuck my right hand out at the end of the match and realize too late in horror that it's going to get shaken and I hope this guy's grip is not too hard. No such luck; It's just a little too firm and I feel things snapping below my pinky. Crap, I wonder when it's going to heal up. Probably never, if I shake hands with anyone in the next six months. This is really messing up my piano playing. The weird thing is that at this point, a hard handshake is about the only thing that really hurts it, though I can't bear much weight on my pinky and playing octaves or more on the piano is not too comfortable.

My play was dismal and it was making a huge black cloud appear over my head. During the warm-up, I didn't hit hardly any backhands right. I even tried to concentrate on it, and it just got worse. Uh-oh, I thought to myself, that's a bad sign. During the match, my backhand was about an 0.2 on a scale of 0 to 10. And I could not get my serve happening either. I think I got maybe five first serves in the whole match, and my second serves were my B-serves which he was able to direct to my definite disadvantage.

Not that he wasn't a very good player. He hit with good power, topspin and depth and exerted good direction. But I've played people who hit like that before and been able to at least be in the game somewhat. In this one, I had completely checked out of the motel. All I could do was helplessly watch myself flub shot after shot and, though he forced many errors, I managed to make a huge amount of unforced errors.

I won the first two games, and then didn't win a single game after that. I don't think I even had the offense on hardly any points after that. I figured it was over by about the second game of the second set. This is the kind of thing I just want to put behind me and tell myself, "Be dang thankful you don't play like that all the time." If I did, I'd probably quit playing...