This is harder than golf!

When we grew up in New Jersey, we all played handball on 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 is relatively flat. We play for hours and hours.

Then, years later, I became familiar with handball as it should be played, on a full-size court. This 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 I was still in pain from firing many shots, but at least the puncture was minimized. Usually he still came off the courts with welts on his wrists from all the shots he ‘just missed’. This seemed like a pretty macho game and it was also good exercise.

Later I found out about the availability of the racket ball (or racquetball), which is played on the same court as handball. Using rackets instead of hands alleviates 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 short next to the one I used to wear was different from the neighbor in that it had more lines painted on the walls and seemed smaller. I found out that it was a squash court and later a friend asked me if I wanted to try it. I slowed down his extra squash racket and we gave it a spin. It was good, but it wasn’t as much fun for me as racquetball.

Back around the corner, just past the tennis stringing machine, there was a huge display of all things “racket”. They even had ping pong stuff in that section. I suppose ping pong is also a racket game, in a sense … kind of a mini version of tennis.

Now I “graduated” to play table tennis. This game is fun and easy and the whole family likes to play. The table was simple to set up and the equipment was very reasonably priced. We had lots of fun.