evil tennis
so this one time my parents and i went to this CAPI gathering, and without getting into details, i’ll just describe it as sort of a picnic/barbecue/conference. and we had gone many times to this annual event and they always held athletic contests, once i won the swimming race. and so this year i entered the tennis tournament. and there were only two other people who ended up signing up for this contest, both friends of mine. so to respect the privacy of the other competitors, let’s just call them judd nelson and judge judy. keep in mind that they were both boys, don’t let the judy throw you. so judd nelson was the youngest, weakest, and most awkward of the three of us. and both judge judy and i defeated him handily. so then judge judy and i played in the final. and we were playing best of three games per match. i know that seems kind of wussy, but we were little kids with little strides, we got tired running across the court. so then judge judy and i played and he won easily. but then he says to me he says, since it’s the final, why don’t we play best of five instead. and i guess he said this because he felt sorry for me, or perhaps because he just wanted to play some more. so we continued the match and of course i came back and defeated him. and the second that i won the final point, he came to the net and said something like, remember, i gave you the best of five, so i am the rightful winner of this competition. and of course, being friends, i said yeah, sure that’s fine. but it wasn’t fine and it still isn’t fine. why did we play the best of five if it didn’t count? why would he offer it if he wasn’t ready to accept the loss if he lost? obviously he thought there was no way i was going to come back and reach five games first, having been down three to one. so that still kind of bothers me a little bit. we were friends for a long time after that match and i never brought it up but it always bothered me. i thought of this incident recently and it rekindled these feelings. i bring this up to offer a lesson. it is obvious, i believe, but i will elaborate for good measure. if you ever attend a picnic gathering with your parents in which sporting events will be held, and if you enter a tennis competition, and you reach the finals and lose a best of three and your opponent offers to extend the match to a best of five series, please for the love of god nail down with your opponent that if you win, he won’t cry about how it was his generosity that gave you this second chance and so he is the real champion. because if you don’t you will end up fat and drunk.
