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a bowling alley with his gym bag, or a Kennedy tinkering with his engine just before his stock car race? On the coldest day in the midwest you could always pick up a newspaper and see one of them with a white sweater knotted around his neck, shading his eyes from the blazing sun.
    As a nuevo tennis player, I felt like Belle Watling (the madam in Gone with the Wind who tried to buy respectability by giving money to a hospital). The question was could a woman plagued by varicose veins find happiness with a tennis player who was attached to his mother by an umbilical sweatband?
    My first day out was a disaster. I encountered a member of the First Family of tennis who appraised me coolly.
    “White is tacky,” she, sniffed. “Everyone but everyone who plays tennis these days dresses in colors. Tell me, who is your pro?”
    “I've been getting a little help with my strokes from Leroy Ace.”
    She frowned, “I don't believe I've heard of him. What club?”
    "The boy's club. But he moonlights from his garage."
    “How well do you play?” she asked before going to the other side of the net.
    “I had tennis elbow twice last week.”
    “That only means something is wrong with your stroke. You need help. Do you prefer string or gut?”
    “I'll play with anybody,” I shrugged.
    “Would you like to warm up?”
    “Sure,” I popped a ball over the fence. “Would you believe I've only been playing for two days?”
    “That long?” she said tiredly.
    “What about you?” I asked.
    “I played in the good old days,” she said slowly, “before they opened up the courts to Democrats.”
    I didn't care what she said. I knew that, somehow, in this lumpy little body that tripped over lint in the carpet was a Chrissie Evert just fighting to get out.
    It was just a matter of time before I developed a form, learned how to get my racket out of the press, and didn't require oxygen after each serve.
    But first, I knew I would never be taken seriously as a tennis player until I learned how to pick up the ball. I summoned my son.
    Now, there are few things in this world more satisfying than having your son teach you how to play tennis. One is having a semitruck run over your foot.
    It's almost as if he is paying you back for letting him fall off the dryer when he was a baby... for putting him to bed on his fifth birthday when he threw ice cream into the fan... for bailing out of the car when you were teaching him how to drive. All the hostilities come out the moment you walk onto the court together.
    “Okay, we're going to continue today with our instruction on how to pick up the ball.”
    “I know how to pick up the ball,” I said.
    "I've told you before; we do not pick up the ball like a gorilla going for a banana. There is a professional way and there are several approaches. You can learn with the western forehand grip. Lean over gently and tap the ball with your racket until it bounces."
    Several minutes later as I was on my knees pounding the racket into the yellow optic, he leaned over and said, “It's not a snake you are beating to death. It is a tennis ball. Let's try the ball- against-the-foot method.”
    I stood up exhausted. “How does that work again?”
    “You grip your racket against the ball and firmly force it to the inside of your left foot. Bending your knee, you lift the ball to about six inches off the ground and drop it. When it bounces, you continue bouncing it with your racket until you can pluck it off the ground and into your hand.”
    Gripping the racket, I forced the ball to the inside of my foot where it rolled over the foot and toward the net. I cornered it and started inching the ball up my leg, but lost my balance and fell into the net.
    Approaching the ball once more I accidentally kicked it with my foot and, in a crouched position, I chased it to the corner of the court, slamming my body into the fence.
    For the next fifteen minutes, the elusive little ball moved all over the court like it had a motor