I play tennis every week, and believe me, I always come prepared.
But on this one occasion a while ago, I hadn’t practiced my serves, my groundstrokes, or even my volleys. I wasn’t even trying to build up a psychological edge to overcome my opponents. In fact, my preparation had very little to do with playing tennis at all.
Instead, most of my preparation involved coming up with the most creative insults that I could spew forth at the most opportune moment in the match.
You see, as most guys know, whenever you get together with a bunch of married guys, particularly if the occasion involves sports and/or pizza and/or beer, the bulk of the evening is spent less on the stated activity itself and more on our ability to degrade each other in the most inventive ways possible.
It helps that we all like each other.
Our evenings usually entail the following series of steps:
1. Play a point as best we can.
2. Follow up the point with a witty insult, usually involving someone’s manhood, using repartee as visually descriptive as possible.
3. Play another point.
4. Follow the insult up with some creative way of linking your opponent’s poor play due to the lack of said manhood as described in step number two.
5. Repeat process until someone is declared the winner.
You may think it sounds like some misguided machismo in action by a group of middle-aged men just trying to escape the daily grind of life. I’d love to debate that point with you but, what can I say, you’ve kind of hit the nail on the head.
But this particular night was different.
My wife Maya was traveling on business and my son Tyler was in school, so I had no one to watch my other son and daughter, Ethan and Savannah. There wasn’t enough notice for me to find a babysitter.
As many of you know, we have triplets. Ethan and Savannah have autism. Tyler is a typical school kid.
Being a special needs family is often a challenge, but Maya and I decided long ago that we wouldn’t let autism keep us from living the life we wanted. Instead of cancelling out on the tennis group, I just decided to bring Ethan and Savannah with me.
Ethan and Savannah are two of the most good-natured and gentle kids you’ll ever come across. They love music, love swimming and usually go through the day with smiles on their faces. They certainly have their challenges, but the ability to love life isn’t one of them.
I had taken them out before to see if they would like playing tennis. Neither one showed much interest in it. I suspect that has to do with the inherent need to be competitive when you’re playing tennis. As far as I can tell, neither Ethan nor Savannah have any impulse or need to beat someone else at anything.
Having said that, I knew that they would be fine watching their dad play tennis for a couple of hours, just enjoying the cool evening breeze that evening.
That night, our group played on three courts — four players on each court. I was playing on the middle court, and Ethan and Savannah were sitting one court away, near a fence, on some folding chairs I had brought for them.
As I walked out on court, as I sometimes do when I go into social situations where I’m trying to avoid any possible misunderstandings or mixed messages, I mentioned to one of the guys that Ethan and Savannah were my kids, and they were autistic, so if they were to speak to them and they didn’t respond or didn’t respond appropriately, they would understand why.
My friend smiled, looked at me and said, “Oh I know! Hi Savannah! Hi Ethan!” — easy enough.
For the next hour, everything was routine. We all played our matches, and maybe there was a little let up in the witty repartee seeing as there were impressionable minors on the court, but that was to be expected.
It’s what came next that came as a surprise.
Being a special needs family, the normal reaction when we’re in a social setting with people who don’t have any experience with it, is that they tend to show comion, patience, but not much interaction. I can understand it — they don’t know exactly what they should do, so they tend to keep their distance. It’s almost a cordial indifference.
But in the middle of my match, as I got ready to serve a point, I looked over to the court next to me, and saw Ethan and Savannah on the court, holding racquets, with two of the guys standing behind them, clapping and cheering them on.
“Go Ethan! Hit the ball! You can do it!” said one.
“Way to go, Savannah! Hit the ball!” said the other.
Two of the other guys were across the net, shouting encouragement as loud as can be, just eager to cheer the kids on. Ethan and Savannah, for their part, were laughing with glee and jumping up and down, not knowing exactly how to hit the ball, but happy all the same just to give it a try.
Turning back to start our game again, I missed my serve, but that was the last thing I was thinking about at that point. Everyone on our court turned to what was happening on the other court, and they started cheering on Ethan and Savannah too.
I was watching a group of grown men cheer on kids they had never met before, giving up their time to play tennis to give these kids a chance to play — and they all relished every moment of it. Needless to say, I was more than just a little choked up.
After the match, as I was all packed up and ready to go, I turned to the group and said, “Thank you guys, for doing that. I tried teaching them how to play tennis but they never seemed interested. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you guys just did.”
They smiled and said it was nothing. But they’re wrong. It wasn’t nothing. For me, what I saw last night — well, it just meant everything.
