Michael,

The Rakkity-Katie game came and went without any serious injuries (sorry Michael!), but the games were livened by a few wall and ball collisions and many calls of “Hinder!” Katie is a semi-cautious player, “semi” not meaning that she doesn’t dive for the wall sometimes, but she’s really careful about careening out of control into her opponent (which Patrick, Dom, and Yours Truly are not.)

Our first game started at 5:00 sharp, and began tentatively, both playing right-handed, without any handicap points given. (No left-handed playing yet for Rakkity, thank you.) A number of times when we were on intersecting trajectories, Katie stopped the game with a “Hinder!” call, and we re-started from the serve. One of her shots slapped me on the back of my left shoulder (the bum one), and re-bounded into my jaw. Katie was very apologetic, but needlessly, since ball-hits are a part of the game. Katie put up a good fight in the game, but those good years of trickery and treachery learned in competition against son & Dom were too much for her, and she lost a quick game 15-8.

Being a gentleman of the court, Rakkity offered a handicap–he could only serve to and return to the right half of the front wall. Any serves or returns to the left half would be a losing point or a losing service. Katie gained a lot of points that game when old rickkety rakkity couldn’t quite scoop the ball to the right side. She won 15-13, but not without a trophy red spot on her wrist, where one of my balls clipped her on a return. (Oops! Sorry, Katie!) You could hardly see the red spot there, since her arm was glowing red from exertion, but she had to rub it a lot before going on.

The third game was marked by about a dozen calls of “Hinder!” when Katie couldn’t return the ball without a risk of beaning me, smashing into me, or creaming me with the racquet. She complained that this right-wall handicap I had given her was putting us both on the right side of the court all the time, leading to lots of near collisions. The number of near-collisions didn’t seem so excessive to me, but that’s from a perspective of a more aggressive style. We changed the handicap rule to make me hit to the left half of the front wall. While it might have opened up the game, it didn’t help her, since my serves and returns were to her left hand, which wasn’t as good that day as usual, so Rakkity won that game. Time was up at 6:00 pm Father and daughter retired from the court, steaming with sweat, and grinning together happily.

–rakkity