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.