Tennis, Anyone?

Laughing at some of Jo's recent entries about compulsive comments-checking. Yeah, babe, me too. Although I don't get any drive-by visitors; possibly the autism component makes people fidgety and cautious? Hmm. Perhaps I should add more expletives.

Leelo is running around in a Tennis Club logo t-shirt. My child. The strangeness of this is almost impossible to communicate, but I'll try.

Needless to say, the shirt was a gift. From Seymour's parents. Who are STC members after 10 years of waiting for other members to die off and free up slots. Seymour's mom likes to joke that the club should have an adjacent cemetery to make things convenient, seeing as most members are far too old and rickety to actually play tennis.

Now, I adore Seymour's folks, and they seem to like me okay. They are kind, funny, and generous, and it is largely through their support that Leelo's therapy program exists. I respect how different their life is from how their life was, and that they started from squat with no external support. We all get along, as long as no one breathes a word about politics (they are staunch supporters of Bush and his local cheerleader, U.S. Rep. J. Dunn). I am fascinated by aspects of their alternate dimension, with its boats and Clubs and fundraisers, its trim humorless women and overly jovial men.

But I don't get it. I do feel like part of the Rosenberg family, but the rest couldn't be more foreign. I don't play tennis, my hair color isn't regulation, I don't like doing the chit-chat cha-cha-cha, and I especially dislike being lined up and measured against all the other "kids" our age (this is done by the other parents, not Seymour's).

While at the Club, I hide on the far side of the far table, quietly order drinks, and gawk at the passing specimens like a newbie anthropologist (Seymour and I use this time to play I Spy, Plastic Surgery Edition). When we leave I perk up visibly.

Once we get three or four streets away from the hushed green lawns and quiet houses surrounding the club, the neighborhoods start to melt and swirl and come alive. People start appearing on the streets. We keep driving and the neighborhoods keep changing, and as we reach the bridge I comfort myself with the thought that in S____, it's those Tennis People who are the town freaks.