“Perhaps I’ve grown a
little cynical…”
Don’t lie to me. Don’t
play games. Don’t call the ball out when I see clearly it landed between the
lines. It only pisses me off. Or is that your aim? Is that your angle?
Have you ever talked to
yourself in this manner while on the tennis court? Sure you have. Everyone
tells themselves things to make them feel better. What better voice than our
very own to provide an impromptu pep talk at the height of exasperation?
Nothing infuriates me
more than a cheater. I can tolerate a lot, but I can never tolerate someone who
constantly makes bad calls. In high school and college, you seldom have the
luxury of a line judge. This means each player is responsible for keeping the
game honorable, for making the just call no matter the score. I admit I’ve been
tempted to call a ball out when I am down in a game. When I am losing a match,
it’s so easy to slip on a call I know my opponent could not get a clear view of
from across the court. What stops someone from lying? I guess it’s something
called integrity, and I wish more people would apply this principle to all
areas of their lives.
We talk to make
ourselves forget too. I started practicing this act of forgetting when I was in
the middle of a match where my opponent was clearly winning some heavily shady
points. She was missing calls so much I was going to ask her if she wanted to
break to put on a pair of glasses. Was she blind? I turned it around, mostly
because I was furious with the how the match was shaping out. I turned around
my thoughts to help me forget her poor attempt at lying by lying to myself.
Maybe she was making the right calls and it was I who was to blame. I was the
one hitting these lousily close-to-the-line calls anyway. Well, this ended up
not working either. It only made me feel worse about my play and about my
opponent. I was misattributing credit to someone who didn’t have the authenticity
to make the right call, to play by the rules.
This incident reminds
me of something else. I have continually blamed myself for people who bend the
rules. I can’t tell why I do this, whether it is guilt, fear or embarrassment. It’s
made me grow very cynical of people. I still have a great deal of trust for
most people, but somewhere inside I’ve lost my full capacity to believe in
other people. This makes me sad. Why do people tell you one thing and do
another? Is everyone really out for themselves?
What happened to the spirit of brotherhood, teamwork and a collective group
effort? Why do people cheat? What is to be attained by lying to someone? It only hurts people. It hurts most when it comes
from someone you trusted. So, please…don’t humor me and tell me lies. I’ll see
right through it.
“And I’ll lie too and
say I don’t mind”
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