I recently started playing tennis with a guy that I met on State St. in Santa Barbara after the bars all closed and kicked us out. We both had altered perceptions at the time and started talking about our tennis playing abilities and agreed to play tennis sometime thereafter. The next morning, my memory of this conversation was less than clear and I was afraid I may have claimed that I was actually good at tennis and was about to be proven completely and utterly mistaken. Luckily, my new friend was also a tennis novice and our skills were pretty much on the same level. Nonetheless, I like to think that I'm at least decent at vollying a tennis ball back and forth and thus it is hard for me to admit when I have issues doing so. The first time we played tennis, we started out okay but got progressively worse as we went on. There were a couple of guys playing in the court next to us, so when we discovered that our balls had been swapped for theirs, we blamed our terribleness on that. "These balls are completely ruining our game. GOSH." So there we have it... excuse number one: Blame it on the balls. (no pun intended)

The second time we played tennis, we had brand new balls so our old excuse was shot to hell. However, I am the type of person that has a hard time being held accountable for anything so I knew there were other reasons for my inability to make contact with the tennis ball. My shoes, of course! I was wearing new shoes. They were obviously going to throw me off balance a bit, and thus make it more difficult for me to play tennis. It wasn't my fault, it was my shoes. And likewise, it was also my shoes' fault when my friend couldn't hit the ball either. Perfect. But it didn't end there. We started thinking of lots of reasons why we were sucking... we had both been out quite late the night before, and were still experiencing the after effects. I had been overseas the week prior, so I was obviously suffering from jet lag as well. The clouds were so pretty as the sun was going down that my friend was clearly distracted by them and wasn't able to play to his full potential. Being bad at tennis was the fault of everything but ourselves... So, when I'm not using crappy balls or wearing new shoes, haven't been traveling overseas, wasn't out the night before, and I'm not distracted by the sunset, I am VERY good at tennis. Clearly.