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Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Dinkers are Stinkers!

Since the football fireside I'm totally in the zone. Isn't that what athletes always say? I'm in the sports/life parallel zone. So here's a sports/life parallel. (My husband would be so proud if he only read me.)

Have you ever noticed that life is like a game of tennis?

Cheaters do prosper sometimes. Especially when they call a shot out that was clearly in. Several times in a row. At crucial points in the game. This happened to my 10 year old on Saturday. His opponant also lied about the score in a critical game, but my son didn't have the nerve to call him out.

He ended up losing the match.

Life is also like a game of tennis because dinkers are stinkers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Can you feel the truth in that statement?)

On Saturday my daughter played a match against a dinker. I usually don't get rattled for my daughter but I was so giving that dink-eye the stink-eye!

Dinking my daughter! How dare she!

No one dinks my daughter without getting the stink-eye from me!

Don't get me wrong. I can handle dinking if the player is really just a dink. But when a player can PLAY but chooses to dink simply to move their opponent out of position so they can slam it past them, that twists my knickers up, BIG TIME! (I miss Jami so much when I borrow her phrases like that.)

If you're gonna win, win in good form. And if you're gonna lose, lose in good form.

That's what I always say.

Play up!

I always say that too.

PLAY UP, Dinker! (You little stinker!)

My husband, who really is the yoda of tennis, disagrees with me. He doesn't get rattled by dinkers at all. He says that's life. Life is about dinkers and you have to learn how to play with them. You have to learn how to stay in control of your own game.

Provide us with the perfect opportunity to learn, dinkers do, says he.

Despise psychological warfare, I do, says me.

My husband was lucky. He got to learn life from tennis instead of learning life from life. By the time he was twelve years old he was the #1 player in Utah. He even played against Andre Agassi, (He lost, but he could have married Brooke Shields if he hadn't switched to Basketball. That's the one joke he laughs about.)

Do you want to see a picture of my cute yoda husband when he was a super star?

Oh, look to your left. There he is.

Look at that focus. Now imagine that picking out a roast at Costco.

I would have married him at twelve if I had seen this. All that focus is kinda sexy (unless you're picking out a roast).

So this is how my husband learned to deal with psychological warfare.

I never got to learn that on the tennis court. I had to learn that from my mother-in-law. If I had learned it on the tennis court, the first 15 years of my marriage would have been so much easier.

It took my husband and my father-in-law 15 years to teach me how to play tennis, and I can't tell you how many times I burst into tears. Well yes, I can. I burst into tears once. But it was embarrassing because . . . there's no crying in tennis!

Here is my daughter trying to learn how to deal with dinkers.


And here is her coach trying to teach her how to deal with dinkers. (Thanks, Martha!)



Here is the other coach. She squats when she teachers her players how to unleash their psychological dinking powers. Sneaky strategy.

My daughter lost to the dinker.

But then they played each other again in doubles. With her partner, my daughter took control of her game and won. Sometimes things are just easier with a partner.

Redemption is sweet. Can you see it in her eyes?

Redemption is sweet in life too. (Notice I didn't say revenge. I said redemption.)

My son played a girl in a wheelchair. She didn't dink. She played up. She played way up.

Which made my son play up.

Don't you love it when people who have every excuse to play down, play up?

The girl in the wheelchair lost to my son. But she lost in good form. If she had dinked it more and called a few shots out, she might have been able to win.
My son won in good form too. He had to play his best to win. (And his best is super good.)

They both received the sportsmanship award.

The moral of the story? Dinkers are stinkers. So play up. In good form. But control your own game. And be a good sport. And know the score, in case you have to call the cheaters out.

Amen.

16 comments:

Kristina P. said...

Well, your Dunny family is very talented! I'm a racquetball girl myself. It's so much easier when you are surrounded by 4 walls.

Kristina P. said...

Your DUMMY family is also very talented.

Debbie said...

Way to go! Redemption and revenge are both sweet.

Funny Farmer said...

I have experienced that very same thing: watching a cheater beat my kid. Infuriating!

Dinking = psychological warfare? Hmm... nope. I don't get it.

OldBoatGuy said...

Crash, that was awsome!!!!!!!!

See all the !!!!!! marks?

You were nickers? Hee Hee

I hope you notice that I call you Crash. It used to be with a small "c". I have a story on the word processor about that.

I can see your daughter looks alot like you, IF YOU'D SHOW YOUR FACE!

essodi.........he es sso a dinker.

Alyson | New England Living said...

Being the complete non-athlete that I am (I'm the girl who faked a stomach ache to get out of dodge ball every week, yeah, pathetic) I'm a bit lost on the terminolgy here. Dinkers? Is that a real thing? A real word? I never know with you!

Yep, I know that look in your husband's eyes. It's the same one in my husband's eyes when we hit Costco too.

I'm glad that you're not raising dinkers! Whatever they are.

Melanie Jacobson said...

I started a tennis class two months ago. My life lesson is: let the racket do the work.

LBBlum said...

CRASH- tennis is all to reverent a sport for me to watch. That one time we didn't have hockey and we came to cheer you guys on... it killed us we couldn't SHOUT out and rush the boards with our out-rage .. .or CHEER and CHANT for our team..
I don't know how you do it..
my knickers would be in bunches too- if I couldn't express it any other way!

Smart Helm said...

I never knew people actually liked tennis, let along watched it.. except in "Ever After" when the prince is playing. I always thought the tennis court was for Wally Ball (or our version of it since obviously there are no walls).

Happy to know the sport lives on and continues to teach life lessons (besides how to atract a princes attention). Good luck to ur kids!

The Crash Test Dummy said...

Boat guy, you are so silly. Thanks for the capital C, dude! What an honor. Everyone says my daughter is my twin so now you know what I look like. I'm just another pretty face. Nothing special.

Kristina p., you are so silly too! I love silly people.

Debbie--HI! I have missed you, glamour girl. You have such a great name.

Funny Farmer, You know, dinking on purpose is playing mind games with your opponent. Tennis is all about mind games.

Alyson, you are so silly tooooo! Dinking is when you hit the ball soft and drop it near the net to make your opponent run up out of position. It's super annoying and has an agitating effect. And I'm so glad my husband isn't the only focused shopper. Do you think I should start calling my husband a gimp? I wish we could go shopping together and laugh it up at our gimpy husbands. j/k gimpy husband. (he can't hear me.)

Melanie, first rule of tennis. Never never never let your racket do the work for you. But that's a good dummy tip.

Laura you have to read smart helms blog. You guys remind me of each other.

HI SMART HELM! You're silly too.

Mariko said...

I suck at tennis so bad that my husband refuses to play with me. I just laugh and chase the ball all over the court. I hope that my family is as cute as yours and all play a sport that I'm good at (hmmmm... Does ultimate frisbee count if I'm a barely passable player?) when they're all grown up and professionally sportsmanlike against dinkers (PSAD).

Heidi said...

A very amusing post, one which I suspect I would have appreciated even more if I had the slightest idea what a dinker is, or even, what it is to dink. The stink-eye, I get. Usually from my daughter (the dinky stinker!)

MakingChanges said...

AWESOME! I call my little one Dinker, though. Maybe I will have to change that now. She started off as Stinker (stinky diapers, you know). Then it turned into Stinker Dinker. Then I shortened it to just Dinker. Not that you needed to know any of that.

Anyhow- loved the tennis photos. I was never a good one at tennis. By the way- League of Their Own is one of my favorite movies. Loved your sorta quote... I tell my kids when they whine- there's no crying in baseball. They even say it to each other sometimes. It's hilarious hearing a 4 year old say it to his sister. Heehee!

Mags said...

I feel like I'm intruding!...I didn't know that the term is dinker :0 but am glad to know what to label it. I have had moments when my child played up and Ive had moments when my child was a dinker, how embarassing but we must crash sometimes huh.

Mariko said...

Oh, by the way, you do know that when you put up pictures of your daughter, you're basically putting up pictures of yourself, right? No hiding now!

Martha said...

Of all the sports that I've ever played I've learned more from tennis than any other. There are so many parallels to life I can't even begin to start.

My favorite part is that in tennis you can always come back. It's not over 'til it's over. Even if you get way down, you can still pull it out because you start a new game after someone wins four points. What other sport does that? If you are losing a basketball game by even 10 points it's pretty hard to come back, but in tennis it's possible.

There's my coaching lesson of the day.

Oh yeah and just to let everyone know all Crash's kids are all headed to college on athletic scholarships. The delimma will be choosing which sport.