When kids were kids in most rural towns, there was gravel on the playgrounds, goat head stickers in the outfields of ball fields.
And then if you were lucky? There was a tetherball set up beckoning you to give it a try. For me? Yes, I gave it a try over and over again… With my face!
But. Yes, a cold, wet, stiff ball smack on a “but.” If you ever got to hit that thing, you had the feeling that you could now take on the world. I am getting ahead of myself though. Let me give you a visual of the playground tetherball.
There is a twenty-one-foot length of two-inch pipe, metal. Of those twenty-one feet, about seven foot is cemented in the ground and fourteen fee is sticking straight up in the air; of which on the top is “tethered” a ball on a rope.
Yes, at least fourteen foot high with a swivel of some type attached to the top. On that swivel a length of about eight-foot white cotton rope with a good sturdy snap hook is attached.
On the other end of that rope “it” was there. “It” being an 8 inch “soft-ish” white leather tether ball. I say soft because who would want to put a hard, face denting ball on a piece of playground equipment for unsuspecting children to walk up to and think they are smarter than an ole ball! Thus: tetherball.
On paper that ball may have been reported as “soft.” But out on the playground in the rain, sun, snow, sleet, cold, hot or in-between weather, that ball was never soft---it was HARD
Hard as a slab of beef jerky that had been drying two weeks in the July sun in the Serengeti Desert! Yes, that hard. That my friends is the creation of a tetherball for children to play during recess on rural and some urban American playgrounds.
I admit as an 7th grader I was moved from the city, Reno, to a rural setting, Ely, Nevada. I had grown up on slides, monkey bars, and swings. Tetherball looked like so much fun. The girls I watched play were good. Actually, very good. So good they made it look easy. So, when I was introduced to my first tetherball match, I jumped at the chance. What could happen?!
When the ball was served to me, I was so unprepared. That baby came at me at 576 miles per hour — at least. I missed as it sailed past me. The girl opposite me hit that thing again with such precision and caused it to gain such velocity. I never saw it coming. No, no it was not soft when it hit my virgin 7th grader face.
When my eyes finally did come back into focus, I remember seeing the ball making its final twist around the pole and the ball hitting the pole, thus ending the game. As they say, “The crowd went wild.”
HAHA That girl, Valincia, became one of my three very best friends for the rest of our lives together. She passed away recently and I started to think about tetherball and what I learned from that smack in my face.
Life begins simple enough. A silly game where the ball goes slowly around while we watch with unhampered fear or knowledge of life and all its charms. Watching and learning. Learning and watching. Then? SMACK!
I love life and all the twists and turns of it. Even the smacks in the face. You know them, I am sure. Like, out of money before you are out of month. That high auto insurance deductible you chose, that brought your premiums down? Now you have to pay the first $1500 of any repairs that happen when your car gets smacked. It’s never a good time for the washing machine to die…
But sooner or later we all get the fantastic feeling of hitting that tether ball and having it sail up and around and around. Your kid brings home straight A’s---okay straight B’s. Your mother-in-law says she just can’t see her and the father-in-law coming for a week in July. HEE HEE The price of turkeys for Thanksgiving was just put on a buy-one-get-one-FREE special as you walked by the meat freezer. Yes, those are all tetherball moments too.
The correlations in life are many. But I am here to tell you that the oohs and aahs, the dang it and drats of life are so close to playing tetherball you can feel the cold wet slap and the soaring heights of that same “soft” ball as it travels through your life and around your pole. Enjoy the game.
Trina lives in Diamond Valley, north of Eureka, Nevada. She loves to hear from readers. Email her at itybytrina@yahoo.com
Really!