I have never been a fan of racket sports. I blamed being shot in the eye with a pellet gun when I was 14 for my shoddy depth perception. Yeah, that's why I can't hit the green ball or the blue ball or that crazy little white one. I have a legitimate excuse! An easy out to invitations to play all those damn sports. Living in China, the racket sport of choice is badminton. Every single Chinese person plays, and there are a lot of Chinese people.
I evaded every opportunity to play for about 8 months. Then last month one of my colleagues asked me to help her warmup before a tournament at school. It took about two minutes for me to realize what I had been missing. Within those two minutes, my heart rate was up, my muscles were warm, and my lips were taut in a smile. If I hadn't been wearing suit pants, a silk blouse, and fancy shoes, I would've played for hours.
That is not to say I was any good. Most of the warmth in my muscles was due to squatting to pick up the birdie =) But... I'm good now! I play at least twice a week, sometimes for four hours at a time. I spent the first few weeks talking my opponents into a strange objective: "Let's see how many times we can hit it back and forth." Their compliance helped me develop my swings without worrying too much about running all over the place. That shot in the eye excuse I had employed all those years really did give me some trouble. I'd swear I was about to smash that bad birdie only to have it fly just over my racket. So I trained my brain to move my arm up... Now, I move my eyes to where I want to hit the birdie and let my arm and brain work out the rest.
I played my first real games two days ago and won them both! No more "let's play nice" objective. I'm playing to win!
I <3 badassminton!
