The Pleasure of Being Mediocre

Laura Lippman was raised to excel, which meant dropping sports in favor of school work. Decades later, she returned to the tennis court to conquer her fears once and for all. Getty I have no natural athletic ability, although I have always looked as if I might— tall, broad-shouldered, with muscular arms and legs. I run slowly, with an awkward gait. To say that I throw like a girl is unfair to girls everywhere. P.E. class, to me, was something created to jeopardize my precious 4.0 grade point average. (I managed to eke out an A-minus, thanks to written tests and the credit given merely for showing up and suiting up, which turned out to be a pretty useful life lesson.) I swam well enough to be a lifeguard, but not swiftly enough to be part of Baltimore’s ubiquitous swim team culture. I learned to ice skate, but only after two miserable years of walking on my ankles. We had a word for kids like me in the 1970s, a decidedly non-P.C. one, derived from the term “spasmodic.” I heard that word a lot. But when I was 14, I joined my mother for a tennis lesson and it looked, ever so briefly, as if I might have found a sport for which I had some aptitude. For a couple of weeks, we met with an instructor at the public courts near our house. The plan was for us to take lessons together, play together, improve together. Then my father put a stop to it. I was in an accelerated program at school that had a reputation for being difficult. He wanted me to focus on my studies. My mother continued her tennis lessons; her skills quickly outpaced mine, and she found a new partner. For the next 40-plus […]

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