I Got Served

Thirty-six.

That’s my age, but a part of me basically refuses to believe it. And that is the part of me that decided to go play indoor volleyball last night.

I should know better. If I had to describe in five words what my feeling was after playing volleyball for three hours, those words would be “Burning Thigh Muscles of Death”. Well, I suppose “Very Painful Lower Back Contusion” or “Wrist Possibly Broken in Half” would also work, but those ailments aren’t the ones causing me, every time I sit down, to wonder if I’ll ever be able to stand up again for the rest of my natural life. You don’t even want to picture what it is like for me get up from the toilet.

Ha ha. Too late. You have that image stuck in your mind, don’t you?

Well, no offense, but screw you. You aren’t in anywhere near the pain I am. I think I may have bruised every surface of my body. I’m currently on an all-Advil diet. I’ll even take some Vicodin if anyone has it.

And to literally add insult to injury, physical ailments weren’t my only issue last night. I haven’t played volleyball since about 1993, and apparently since then, they changed all the rules. In the early nineties, the rules basically were:

1. If the ball came anywhere near you, try and hit it up in the air.
2. But don’t use your beer hand, lest you might spill some.

Last night, however, I was playing with semiprofessionals that take their volleyball very seriously and have all these new rules about what each position is supposed to do. They were always yelling things at me like “Get in the V!” and “Cover short serve!” and “Beer is not allowed on the court!” and “Stop crying!”

Okay, I’m kidding about the last two, but I really was always getting yelled at, mainly because, no matter where I went on the court, I was always in the wrong place. My teammates tried to help in-between serves, but they were always giving me incomprehensible advice like, “Make sure to play short on serve and immediately fade back afterward but only when we are serving. When they are serving be sure to cover the middle short zone then fade back to let the setter set”.

I would always say “got it” but when play commenced I’d continue to run around randomly bouncing off of my teammates. I’m pretty sure they all thought I was, um, “differently abled”. I’m beginning to agree.

Anyway that was last night; tonight I am just dealing with incredible pain. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m signing off now to go curl into a fetal position and die.