Mike,

Last night Dominic and I had what may be (but maybe not) our last games. Dom started off by wiggling his right wrist under my face, saying, “My wrist isn’t quite back to normal. I can’t really bend this hand back as much as I used to.” That being said, we went on to split 4 very close games. No one got less than 11 points out of 15. Dom showed no sign of weakness.

Right at the end of the 4th, there was a knock on the door and there was Dom’s boss, Bob, and his son Jason. They wanted to play team racquetball, we said sure, and we warmed up a little. Jason was prone to smashing the ball as hard as he could, without finesse, but his reaction time was amazingly short. (Not surprising, him being half the ages of his doddering partners.) Bob, however, hit the ball carefully, favoring control over speed. He’s a veteran of league racquetball, and is a very tough player.

Not being used to the close quarters (after all, a court is a small place for 4 guys swinging racquets), one of my back swings swept off Bob’s googles, and another one tapped his nose lightly. No damage done, luckily, but instead of hovering behind me, he backed a little further away. Once when the ball was coming toward me with him in the way, I bumped into his left side, and swung my arm around his right side to hit the ball. He said, “Hinder!” and we had to replay that volley.

Lots of errant balls smashed into backsides, and there were many near collisions of moving bodies, and lots of “hinders”. Dom and I won the first game handily, and afterwards we stood around resting. Dominic looked at his “previously-used” right hand, and showed us his very red pinkie finger. He said, “I’m going to have to sit this game out and let my hand rest.”

So Bob, Jason and I played cut-throat. Bob really got into gear in this game, and beat Jason and me soundly (15-8-6). At the end, Dominic came back to the court, flexing his damaged hand. With a rueful grimace, he said that he wasn’t going to be able to play at all. The hand wasn’t feeling any better. So we said our goodbyes, and arranged for maybe, possibly, hopefully, one more game this coming Saturday. I shook Bob’s and Jason’s hands, and wished them a merry Christmas, and they wished me a wonderful life in Colorado.

Now it’s up to the gods to decide whether to heal Dom’s hand or not. Two days is a relatively short time for a bad finger to improve, so I’m thinking we may have played our last game.

–rakkity