This is harder than golf!

When we were kids in New Jersey, we all played handball against a wall for fun and exercise. It cost no money to play and the only equipment needed was a ball and a wall. The wall could be anywhere, as long as the surrounding area was relatively flat. We played for hours and hours.

Then, years later, I became familiar with handball as it was meant to be played, on a full size court. This one was quite different and much more complicated geometrically than the game I learned as a child. Adding three walls and the ceiling as additional playing surfaces really speeds up the game (compared to the previous version of one wall).

Gloves became mandatory for me to play handball. Even with the gloves there was still pain from taking a lot of shots, but at least the stinging was minimized. He usually still walked off the court with welts on his wrists from all the shots he ‘just missed’. This seemed like a pretty macho game and it was also a good exercise.

Later I found out about the availability of racket (or racquetball), which is played on the same court as handball. Using rackets instead of hands relieves most of the pain of the game. Of course, getting hit in the face by someone’s fast-moving racket will be smart, but that’s a risk players need to take. It is a good idea to wear protective glasses.

I noticed that the court next to the one I used to use was different from its neighbor in that it had more lines painted on the walls and seemed smaller. This, I found out was a squash court and later a friend asked me if he wanted to try it. He lent me his extra squash racket and we gave it a spin. It was good, but it wasn’t as much fun for me as racquetball.

Around the corner, just past the tennis stringing machine was a large display of all things ‘racket’. They even had ping pong stuff in that section. I guess ping-pong is also a racket game, in a sense… kind of a mini version of tennis.

I have now ‘graduated’ to table tennis. This game is fun and easy and the whole family likes to play it. The table was easy to set up and the equipment was very reasonably priced. We had lots of fun.