Page 87 - MN

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Years later I was working on cruise ship and Paul McFarland was the cruise director. Paul had played football at the University of Montana and then made it to pre-season with the San Diego Chargers as a linebacker. One day, I have no idea where, we played some one-on-one basketball. I just assumed he was big and loved to hit people but I was wrong. He was amazingly quick and again I realized the difference between my athletic dreams and reality.
On the ships we played paddle tennis and I loved it much more than tennis. The court was smaller and we played with tennis balls with the air let out. You'd just poke a surgical needle in, let the air out and the balls were much less lively. It was a great game, kind of between ping pong and tennis, and Paul and I would play a lot. In ports we played tennis and again, I was mediocre but I felt I wasn't horrible. Then we got to Vietnam.
Paul and I were walking through Saigon and there were some Vietnamese guys playing tennis. They were rank beginners, just paddling the ball softly back and forth and I could literally see the thought balloons above our heads with "We'll show these guys how the game is played.".
I should preface this by saying that Paul is 6'4" tall, very strong, and can hit a 100 mph serve. The good news was that it seldom went in. So in our tennis games he would blast balls all over the court and I would spend my time calling "Out".
Well, on this day he had the service games of his life. I spend about 45 minutes waving at aces and it was like PeeWee Herman playing Roger Federer. Embarrassing enough, but afterwards one of the Vietnamese guys came up to me and said, "First time play tennis?"
I love sports.