Pickleball Drama

We have a couple of sessions a week where a plethora of pickleballers show up and the courts are hopping. There’s no organizer and no plan, which is stressful for me as I do well in a disciplined environment and implode when chaos rules. But I like to play pickleball, so I escape the disarray by focusing on the ball and keeping score, and by playing tunes in my head—show tunes, classical, the top forty for the last fifty years—all stored to be pulled up at any time.

There seems to be an accepted way for women to conduct themselves on the court—women only; men would never behave this way. When someone makes a particularly spectacular shot, arms are thrown in the air and everyone cheers volubly. Joyful shrieks and gambols are involved. When a serve slips by the recipient, the person who lets the ball get past her calls out, “Good serve!” And I think—well, not really, it was just an ordinary serve that you for some reason couldn’t return. Also, every error is relived, sometimes clownishly reenacted, and praised. “Good idea,” a player will say to her partner when a dink hits the net instead of going over; or, “Great effort,” when the ball goes out. Everything on the court is about kindness, encouragement, and enthusiasm. All this baseless exultation is difficult for me to emulate because I’m not a giddy person.

Many of us have similar skill levels, though the tennis players are noticeably better; and occasionally someone shows up who has yet to learn the rules. When another player is extremely superior there’s not just one pickle, but pickle after pickle, which is disheartening. And when a beginner who must be instructed between every play joins us, that, too, is difficult to tolerate. Sadly, sometimes the extreme abilities override the songs in my head and I grumble, wanting everything to be the way I want it to be. That makes me the Trump of the pickleball court.

As you can imagine, in this setting many personalities are involved. In a game last week my partner and I were playing horribly. Every serve was met with an error—net balls, balls out of bounds, serves missed. As our opposing server racked up point after point, I commented to my partner that we were giving points away. The server on the other team, quite peeved, said, “Hey. I’m in the zone and I’m working hard here.” Though it was true that we were handing them the game and I’d heard others say the same thing, in retrospect I could see how it could be considered rude. And she seemed angry about it, so after the match I approached her intending to apologize, and was met with a look of hatred so evil that it gave me chills. “Whoa,” I said, abruptly stepping back. I was so shaken that I gathered my gear and went home. I had nightmares that night.

Another incident that left me shaken was when another player’s dog bit me. It’s not my business that she brings her cute little shiatzu to the court for two hours when the temperature’s already in the high nineties and is going to get hotter. While she prepared the dog’s area—setting out his water and hooking his leash to the fence—she let him run free. As I was passing through, on my way to the courts, the dog jumped up and latched on to my finger, teeth digging in and his whole little body hanging before he fell away. Startled, I gave an “Ow.” Then, in an understandably agitated state, I called to the woman, “Hey, your dog bit me.” By the time I put my racket, visor, and water on a bench, blood was pooling in my palm. Trying to keep it from dripping all over the court, I headed toward the pro shop to beg a band-aide. Meanwhile, the woman had gathered her and her dog’s things and was also aiming toward the exit. Ten feet in front of me, her shoulders were rigid and her fury was palpable. “You don’t need to leave,” I told her. “I’m not mad. I understand dogs.” I also understand that her dog shouldn’t be there, had no desire to be there, and that her bringing him was an act of cruelty. She ignored me, continuing in her forward movement.

If my dog had bitten someone I would have at least called afterward to make sure she was okay. Hell, I’d have sent flowers. But what she did instead is quit coming. 

“Did she stop coming because her dog bit me?” I asked one of the other women.

“She thinks you’re a negative force.”

The biting dog woman is popular amongst the other women and now, because of me, she no longer comes. And I am a negative force. It’s a topsy-turvy world.

So my way of handling things with these two enemies I have inadvertently made is to wait until the last minute to put my name on the roster. And if the woman who gave me the evil look has signed up, or if the woman with the dog has signed up, I don’t go to pickleball that day.

Honest to God, it’s junior high all over again.

The Woman in Front of Me

The people who have early flights from Iceland are dropped off at the airport, and those of us who will depart later are loaded on to a bus for a final excursion. First stop, the Viking Museum, where we’re to spend forty-five minutes. Though I’m certain it’ll be boring, it turns out that there’s one thing kind of cool about it, which is that a longship is suspended from the ceiling. Access is on the second floor, so I go on up, clamber into it, and spend a delightful five minutes fantasizing that I’m a conquering Viking. To my surprise, no one else seems interested in exploring the boat.

As I’m walking down the stairs, I meet a woman ascending.

“The ship’s kind of fun,” I tell her.

“Oh honey,” she responds. “It’s scrawny compared to the one I saw in Norway.”

Her tone is uppity. She’s doing that thing tourists do where they show off how much they’ve traveled, and prattle on about what they saw in which country. David and I learned long ago not to enter into these competitions—the same way we learned not to discuss our brilliant children with the parents of other kids. Other people simply can’t top us, and there’s no joy in pointing it out.

When we return to the bus we’re told that we’ll be traveling ninety minutes to see a geyser. A few people behind me moan. We’ve seen plenty of geysers. This is the second day of a miserable cold for me, and as soon as the engine roars to life I shut my eyes, planning to catch a nap. But the woman in front of me starts sharing her thoughts with her husband. I admire the way she talks, low-pitched and slow as syrup—Alabama is my guess.

“Home tonight,” she says. Then again, “Home tonight. I want my bed. Oh, I want my bed. And then tomorrow I’ve got to get groceries and pick up Baby from Barkingham Palace. Groceries and Baby. Barkingham Palace. I signed her up for a bath and she’ll be soft and clean. This was a good trip. Oh, the food was so good. That’s what I look forward to when we take a cruise—the good food.”

Throughout this there is no response from the husband. She continues.

“And then day after tomorrow I’ve got that dental appointment. For a cleaning. A cleaning. I hope I get that other gal this time. She was nice. The last one was harsh with the floss. Harsh. I need to call Millie May about that book. Oh, that book. She wants to recommend it for our book group but I don’t know if it’s too controversial. There’s so much political turmoil these days. So much political turmoil.”

She’s incessant. She drones on as I lean my head against the window and fall asleep. She’s still talking when, an hour later, we roll to a stop.

It looks like David also had a snooze. As he’s coming awake, I lean toward him and ask in a whisper—Have you been listening to this woman? His response: I’ve been trying not to.

Some people get off to go look at yet another eruption, and some stay put. I elect to remain, as does the couple in front.

“You need to get off and go to the restroom,” the woman tells her husband, who obediently rises, dons his coat, and shuffles toward the exit. Then, though he’s gone, she continues her monologue.

“Where is it?” she asks as she lifts herself taller so she can view her husband as he walks away. “Where’s the men’s? There it is. A line. Oh, a long line. Get in the line! Go ahead! Okay, he’s in line. All these buses. All these buses. No wonder there’re so many in the line. I don’t know about that book Minnie May suggested. Maybe I’ll talk to Carla about. Has Carla read it? I don’t know. I don’t know. What’s he doing? He’s getting out of the line! No. Get back in line! He’s coming back.”

Pretty soon he appears in the doorway and makes his way back to his seat, but she won’t let him claim it.

“What are you doing? Why did you get out of line? You need to go to the restroom. Oh, you need to go. Go. Get back in the line.”

With a shrug, he turns away. Once again, she watches him leave, then keeps watch.

“Good. That’s good. Get in the line.”

Later, as we’re heading back to Reykjavik, we pass a grocery store with a dancing pig on the front. The woman says, “Dancing pig. Dancing pig.”

At the airport, as we’re waiting to hand over our baggage, I give her repetitive way of speaking a try.

“Icelandair,” I say, then again, “Icelandair.” Then, “American Airlines. American Airlines.”

The repetition is bizarrely comforting and, even more bizarrely, addicting.

“Stop it,” I say. “Stop it.”

In our cabin on one of the dressy evenings.

Another one of the many beautiful faces of Iceland.

The Iceland Tour

There’s a reason why tourists flock. There are some places in the world that are so breathtaking, so humbling, that they simply must be experienced. Iceland is one of those places. There is no landscape your eyes light upon that is not stunning. Volcanos, old and new, in the distance—majestic, ominous. Massive lava chunks dragged downward by glaciers—dogged gravitas. A mossy vale with trickling brooks—fairy knoll. Pounding rivers—deafening percussion; steam floating from fissures—affable ghosts.

Magma flowing, molten; cooling, drying, scored by ever downward drifting mountains of ice. Tectonic plates crashing, disparate angles rising, faces forming—craggy noses, ancient jowls, vexed brows. What is today may be gone tomorrow. Dynamic Iceland.

Yesterday in Reykjovik we were wearing short sleeves, but today, hiking the five-mile perimeter of Grimsey Island, we wear layers that come on and go off and come back on depending on whether we’re trudging up or picking our way down. It’s forty-five degrees, wind at forty miles an hour. Nesting on the cliffs, thousands of puffins rise high and drop low, go out and come back. They really are cute birds, with their orange-red curved beaks. Their small wings flap frantically, likewise making me frantic—Come on little birds! You can make it! At some point we wander into the arctic circle, which is no colder than it was five steps ago.  

Iceland is all about volcanos, one of which erupted upon our arrival. In our various buses we zig-zag all around the thing, always keeping it at a distance, with each local guide telling us how impressed we should be by the tiny puff of white floating peacefully above a faraway mountaintop.

Iceland is an environmentally conscientious country. Its citizens eschew plastic in all its forms and prefer electric cars; and a large portion of their energy is harvested from their unique geothermal resources, about which they are smug: they are able to do that which no other country can—function efficiently.

As we cross the country and the guides pour information into brains that’re numb from receiving too much knowledge—and also, what we really care about is what we will have for dinner, for the chef on the boat is truly gifted—they tell us that the main industry in Iceland is agriculture. Hah. The massive vehicles rolling up to every mildly notable volcanic peak, crater, and geyser clearly tell us that the most profitable industry in this country is tourism.

We arrive at another island, Heimaey, which is known for a volcano that erupted here in 1973; I recall that the thick ash it belched out caused all the airports in Europe to close. On the whole island, only one person died, whom, it was widely assumed, had been passed out drunk. The islanders excavated one of the destroyed homes and built a small museum around it. We’re dropped off there and told to spend an hour learning about volcanos—and I think how I’d rather pluck every hair from my head than contemplate volcanos for sixty minutes. Later, our guide, a cocky twenty-two-year-old, climbs a cliff and swings around on a rope, demonstrating the locally popular skill of robbing nests; later he will sing us a rather romantic Icelandic song. He tells a story of the 1973 evacuation—people woken from their beds in the dark of night, the elderly taken out on a plane, only to find that they’d all been pulled from their blankets and led out in such a hurry that they didn’t have time to get their dentures. So a helpful policeman was tasked with fetching all the false teeth, which he dropped in a bag and sent along. The notion of how they straightened that out is amusing and we all chuckle.

For our next excursion, we hike to a lovely waterfall, a place for taking pictures. Halfway back the swift wind blows rain straight at our faces. We put our heads down, shiver, and hurry. Luckily, I wore the rain pants I purchased especially for this purpose. For hiking in Iceland rain gear and hiking boots are a necessity. Simply do not go there without these things. An umbrella? Useless. It’ll explode inside out in two seconds.

On the way back to the boat we stop by an artic fox refuge, where two rescued foxes huddle in their shelter, staying out of the icy wind. The attendant tells us that these animals represent the only wild mammals on the island—and in the next breath, she tells us that the foxes eat mice—and I think hmm.

We take a bath in a hot spring, which feels good and which David says smells like poisonous gas. The others in the group don’t want to hear about poison or gas. When we get back on the bus we’re all warm and relaxed and our skin feels new.

A few facts: Our small ship is owned by a French company, Ponant; the senior staff is French with the occasional German thrown in; servers and cleaners are mostly well-trained Philippinos. There are a hundred and forty-eight passengers and a hundred and fifteen crew members. The name of our ship is Le Ballot. Like any sensible person, I pronounce it the way it looks. Not so, the captain, who in a nasally worshipful tone, pronounces it Loobaloo. Cracks me up every time.

The touring company that has pulled us all together here is Tauck, pronounced Towk, which is owned and operated by the Tauck family out of Wilton, Connecticut. Every passenger on board is here with this company. It’s my understanding that Tauck doesn’t always exclusively occupy an entire vessel, but this is our second cruise with Tauck and that’s been the case both times. Tauck’s guides are charming and sincere in their desire to please, and, from my conversations with them, think that to achieve guide status in this company is to reach the pinnacle of their profession.

I highly recommend the Iceland experience; and if you haven’t thought about taking a Tauck tour, I advise you to consider it. If you’re going to do a thing, why not do it in the best way possible?  

The two walls mark the clash between the Northern American tectonic plate and the Eurasian tectonic plate. The crevices were quite deep in some places and it was really cool to walk around in there.

Halfway back from this waterfall the wind and rain pounded us.

Beautiful pictures everywhere you look.

Appropriate Dressing and a Corpse

We’re having guests for dinner and David comes out dressed in olive camo shorts and a fluorescent salmon T-shirt. I step into the hallway, see what he’s wearing, and have a new-jerk reaction—No! No! Those colors were never meant to be worn together!

Apparently I’ve hurt his feelings because his response is a petulant—Well, look at what you’re wearing!—which makes no sense because I’m dressed in clothing which is, in fact, attractive, appropriate to the occasion, and won’t make anyone’s eyes bleed. He stomps off and comes back wearing the same shorts with a T-shirt he wears when working on Habitat houses—frayed at the seams, faded black, and covered with white paint splotches. I wisely don’t say a word.

He also goes his own way clothing-wise when we’re traveling. For the tour’s getting-acquainted luncheon in Reykjavik, he shows up in olive pants and a maroon T-shirt (Clash!) with TEXAS A&M printed across his belly, though he swore off wearing billboard T-shirts long ago. Though I know better than to chastise, I’m unable to restrain myself from lifting a derisive brow and muttering a snarky, “Really?”

“It’s a conversation starter,” he tells me with an unconcerned shrug.

And indeed it is. Men he doesn’t know cross the room to slap him on the back and tell him they know someone who went to A&M; or that they went to A&M; or that their son or daughter is going or is planning to go to A&M. Or contrarily, they announce that they went to UT but they won’t hold his having gone to A&M against him. All these conversations are hyperbolically convivial. And David’s right. He invited attention as soon as he entered the room.

The next morning we go for a walk. For all we’ve heard about Iceland being, well, icy, there’s no wind and the temperature is a mild seventy-two. Across from the hotel is a walking path that is noticeably pristine, bordered by healthy green grass, and well-planned—a divided bike lane on one side and a divided walking path on the other. The few people using the paths follow the rule about staying to the right. Gotta love a country where its people follow the rules even when there’s no one there to monitor.

We head to the right, and about two hundred yards along we come across a man sleeping in the grass. He’s wearing a cap, a pair of sunglasses, and colorful workout clothes.

As we continue on, we discuss the man who’s passed out and how Reykjavik used to have a reputation as a hard-drinking wild-partying town; and though, in recent years, they’ve worked to change their status, we nevertheless assume drinking too much is the reason he’s passed out in the grass.

When we’ve put in our half-hour, we turn back, and once again come upon the sleeping man, who’s in the same position he was in earlier.

“He’s not breathing,” I tell David.

“Let’s watch and see.”

So we stop and stare at his chest for several minutes. There’s not the slightest rise and fall. What’s the protocol here? Neither one of us brought a phone. David suggests we take the few steps up to the street and see if we can flag down a cop—and there’s no cop in sight; in fact, traffic is so light that there’s only a single set of brake lights in the distance. Ludicrously hopeful, I scan the buildings looking for a police station. No luck.

We decide to return to the hotel and notify the front desk. On the way, we come across a man heading in the opposite direction. David stops him, tells him about the dead body, and asks if he’ll call it in.

“I’ll take a look,” the man says in a skeptical tone, offering no confirmation that he’ll make a call.

When we get back to the hotel, David tells the concierge, who calls the police, who request that David stay and guide them to the body. We need to get cleaned up and packed, so David denies the request, gives a clear description of where the body is (across the street, to the right, adjacent to the socker fields, next to the bench), and returns to our room to get ready for the day.

Later, when our tour comes together and we’re all standing in huddles the way people do when they’re waiting for things to get going, we mention that we came across a dead man on our morning walk.

“I saw him, too,” a woman says. “What time were you walking?”

“Eight-thirty,” we tell her.

“Oh. When I walked by at eleven, he was still there.”

Well, that’s disturbing.

At this point we’re herded on to our buses and are driven around to view the highlights of Reykjavik for a couple of hours before we’re taken to our boat, which will take us to see fjords and puffins, and to hike in the artic circle, where our heads will be attacked by arctic terns. For these excursions we will dress appropriately and as advised—in layers, and in such a way that T-shirts broadcasting personal information will be concealed beneath sweaters, jackets, and windbreakers.

For a reason I’m unaware of, this sphere marks the Arctic Circle. They have to move it every year and it’s expected to be underwater in five years’ time.

This shows how dynamic Iceland is.

Shouting in a Viking-like manner on an ice throne in a frozen cave. Why? Who knows? Then, of course, there’s the T-shirt.