Sporting Memorabilia

When I was a teenager I used to play sandball. I don't know how widespread the sport is, but it's basically indoor beach volleyball. You stand in a giant room made of netting on a ground covered in beach sand, and you play volleyball.

Tangent #1: It always seemed like an odd kind of sport to me, but I suppose when you're in the middle of the desert you seek to replicate the beach experience in whatever small way you can. It did not look like this.

Sandball was the only sport I ever enjoyed. It was light on teamwork and you only had to move a metre at most. It was my kind of sport.

Sadly, my sandball career ended when I collided forcefully with my teammate Kristian. A difference in height led my forehead to connect with his chin. My glasses snapped in half and cut a deep wound along the underside of his jaw. That as enough for me really.

Tangent #2: Ever tried to get sand out of a head injury? Brutal.

When I was a child I used to like sport and activity. I thought I was hot stuff as a glided along on roller blades, my acid green Skate or Die singlet glistening in the sun. I spent hours lazily passing the basketball back and forth with my neighbour Ciarne.

Sadly, as I aged sport became competition and my interest evaporated. Suddenly I was playing against a group of screaming crazies who, in my imagination at least, where four metres tall. My lack of ability made me a subject of scorn from opponents and anger from teammates.

Kinda took the fun out of the whole thing.

Tangent #3: I was awesome at hacky sack in the NES's California Games. Take that world!

My favourite sporting memory is of the last PE lesson of Year 10. Throughout high school my friends Ryan and I had developed the avoidance of sport into somewhat of an artform. On the last day of the year - his last day of school - we were forced to play cricket and, as always, banished far into the outfield where we could be ignored.
Late in the game the ball came sailing out towards us as we sat disinterested on the grass. It approached. It sailed past. We allowed the enraged screams of others to float over our defiant heads.
It was glorious. Everyone else failed to understand how we could do this, how we could show such disrespect for sport.

Like all the rest of the world's constructs, sport isn't evil. But people had used sport as a mechanism for punishing me for years. On that day, I did the same. Some poor jerk had to run the length of the oval to retrieve that ball. He yelled the standard obscenities on the way past of course, but they fell on deaf ears.