This actually happened

It's been a mostly yogless stretch since the OTCY.  My body didn't like what Chicago did to it.  It turns out that compensating for cramping calves by using my quads, hip flexors, hamstrings and groin muscles more than I'm used to can lead to deep, lingering soreness, even when the OTCY itself didn't feel that bad.  Bummer.  Anyways, the yoglessness has given me the chance to think about my last 7 years of yogging, how my hobby has developed, what i enjoy about it, how that's changed over time, and why I'm still excited about continuing with the process despite feeling no sense of accomplishment.  In fact, if anything, my feelings about my performances have been inversely proportional to my improvement in times over the years.  It's a weird condition, but I spent some time trying to disentangle the web of thoughts in my head, and think I've got it pretty much cleared up.  Sweet. 

In other news, yoglessness and a few other added conveniences have afforded me the chance to hit tennis balls more frequently than I have in quite some time.  I played junior tennis growing up, seriously at times, and did ok. I have a few semi-regular practice partners, and it's fun to hit balls on occasion, but the dot com boom was raging when I was last competitive.  A crappy thing about tennis is that for non-tournament players, there's typically a vast divide between the level practiced at and the level competed at.  There's a competitive pressure that takes some getting used to, and strokes that feel like they are deeply ingrained in muscle memory during practice can suddenly disintegrate once the games begin.  There's a necessary period of intense frustration required to bridge the gap between practice and competitive performance level, and after practicing an amazing 3 separate times in a 6 day stretch, I decided to attempt a real comeback.  I googled around and signed up for an informal local league that's organized online.  I scheduled a match for yesterday, and a fantastical series of events unfolded. 

I arrived at the courts at 5:00pm as agreed upon.  There was a man practicing his serve on one of the courts, and he looked pointedly in my direction as I approached.

"Yogger?" he inquired in wonderment.

"Yes, my child, I am the Yogger," I assured him.  And thus we were introduced.  We traded a few rallies in warm up, hit a few serves and began the match.  He was terrible.  I played down to his level.  Every frustration I expected to experience I did.  The 10 year old version of me would have beaten yesterday's version handily.  But my opponent was worse.  He started throwing mini tantrums.  This was normal behavior among petulant juniors, but I expected those tendencies to be less common in thirtysomething hackers.  No.  I gained triumph fairly quickly and just felt disgusting and slimy about the experience.  Ew.  Well, this is the process.  I knew it would be this way so I might as well deal with it. 

After the match, as we were packing up our bags and preparing to leave the court, my opponent said some things that seemed off.  As in, I don't think I was who he thought I was, and he wasn't who I thought he was.  But, how could this be?  He had called out my name upon my approach.  We spoke briefly about the online league we were apart of.  Strange stuff, but I didn't broach the subject in more detail, because I really wanted to depart this person's company and hopefully never see him again.  I returned home, pulled out my phone from my tennis bag and saw several missed calls and a voicemail from an unfamiliar number.  I listened to the voicemail, and it was the actual person I had arranged to play, who was very much NOT the person I had just played.  In the voicemail, he apologized, saying he thought we had set up a match at 5:30, and now, at 5:25, he just realized he was late, and was wondering if I was still at the courts.  So what happened to the guy my opponent had arranged to play?  Could this really happen?  Two Yoggers separately arrange to play different people on the same courts at the same time?  One Yogger doesn't show up and the other Yogger has his opponent not show up, so this Yogger ends up playing the wrong guy?  This may be the most incredible thing to happen in the history of the universe.