FLF

In my article "MY MARCH MADNESS", I wrote that I had no interest in sports as a grown-up. My nephew Allen just e-mailed me to remind me about watching a lot of tennis matches with Gerald and me in the 1970s. No doubt my brother Norman will call me with the familiar sentence, "Did you FORGET to take your Aricept today?", which he does when he notices I have committed an act of forgetfulness. I remind him that it is not nice to poke fun at memory loss, to which he answers, "I don't remember what I just said!" [Hey, we have a routine--like Burns & Allen--too bad Vaudeville is dead!]

I always wanted to play tennis, but we didn't have girls' sports teams when I went to school [thank you, Lyndon Johnson for girls having opportunities] and in 1968, I bought Bancroft tennis racquets for Les and me to learn to play. Although I wasn't heavy at the time, I was racing across the court one evening and Les yelled, "FLF!" The acronym means "FAT LEGS FLY"! [we like acronyms in my family]. Not only did I miss the ball, I called "Unfair advantage!" Gerald was drawn into the tennis mania and I bought him a pair of Rod Laver brand tennis shoes. Getting ready for a Rummage Sale, I was in the storage place above the workshop where I have not entered since 1984, and I saw the old tennis racquets, looking forlorn like something from "Toy Story 4"!

We played regularly until I went to work in Springfield and there weren't enough hours in the day to work, homework, travel and also play tennis. As my mother would say, "Any excuse is better than none!"