Last week I sent an email to Dom saying “game Wed night?” He responded, “I’m in the UK, how about next Wed?”
So next Wednesday came, and the Dom & I met at the court. When I pulled the ball (our only ball) out of my pocket, I looked at it and exclaimed,”Wow! I thought I had gotten rid of this one!” The ball was green (meaning bouncy) and speckled with grey sticky spots. At one time we had played on a newly varnished court, and this ball had found all the places where the varnish hadn’t dried. It was therefore able to generate marvelous spin, and reflected at odd angles that would have made Snell frown. (Snell was a 17th C billiards player who developed “Snell’s law” of reflection.) Out of exasperation, we had given this ball up long ago, but here it was again.
I made a few hits with it, and saw that it had lost none of its magic. But the Dom was impatient. “Let’s not fool around practicing, let’s just start.” After the regulation Bounce to the Centerline playoff, which I won, I served into the left corner. The ball spun off the side wall, hit the back, and virtually rolled along the back wall instead of bouncing. I chuckled as the Dom swung futilely. This went on for 6 more serves, when finally, the Dom got the serve. He hadn’t mastered the art of playing speckle ball, however, and I got the serve back, and went on violating Snell’s laws for seven more serves before he got a point. I won that game 15-1, and the Dom was sweating.
He hunkered down and mastered the speckle serve, but by then I was getting used to the impossible reflections. We were tied at 12-12 when I threw in some Z shots that the speckle ball used to crawl magnetically along the sidewall. Dom was finished.
We rested for several minutes and went on to play two more games. But The Dominator could no longer dominate. The speckle ball beat him in two more games.
Afterwards, Dom pointed to his belly, and said,”No matter how many situps I do, this belly is still growing. I’m thinking of going for lipo. They say that after lipsuction, your belly fat never comes back.”. Well, maybe he’ll do it, and maybe he won’t. But if he does, I’ll look back and think it was because of my anti-Snell ball.
–rakkity
