Maternally Extended

At M’s maternally extended family’s reunion this weekend, I won the doubles tennis tournament.

I’d looked at the rankings when I signed up, and Uncle D asked me where I thought I fit in.

“Well, I’m really not that good,” I said. “Not bad, but certainly not as good as these guys. You’d better put me at the near bottom.” He wrote down my name just above an eight-year-old girl’s.

My low ranking landed me with Cousin D, him being a “strong” man and I the “weak” in our thus dichotomous relationship. In our first match, we played Uncle D and the eight-year-old, and I’m sure that, even though he showed no trace of such feeling, Uncle D was sorely disappointed to be edged out of the running so early in the day, and on his homemade grass court at that.

The final match went into overtime, but Cousin D and I managed to plod through. I felt a twinge of guilt about having claimed to be so bad at tennis, but as I said to more than a couple people after the match, “I really don’t know how to estimate my tennis abilities.”

I won two small bars of Hershey’s dark chocolate! M was appreciative, as was N of Grandma H’s shoes:

Tennis fame and fortune and good family visiting aside, however, I really don’t know if I should go back to another of those reunions. Last year, during a running game, I collided with another Cousin D and we both had sore knees for quite a while. This year, before the tennis match on Saturday, our car suffered a dent from a soft ball hit foul by still another Cousin D. Lucky for us, it didn’t hit an inch farther to the east or west, which would have cost us a windshield or a passenger-side window, and would have preempted our later drive with yet still another Cousin D to another Uncle D’s house for the night.

Dangerous things, family–with a capital D!

One more thing: My wife’s brother-in-law works for a major seed company, and was sporting a cool-looking ball cap with the company’s logo and some graphics for a new, entirely politically incorrect agricultural product that’s not even on the market yet.

“Nice hat,” I said to him.

“Do you want one? I have one upstairs you can have.”

“Really? Sweet!”

He brought it to me, and I must say, it’s the most comfortable cap I’ve ever worn. Then I noticed (well, noticed once again) that he drives a really sweet company truck.

“Nice truck,” I said to him.

“Nice try,” he said.