Bran and I were getting some good technical stick rounds in before moving onto boxing. We were working on passing strokes in the south corner of the tennis court at Burdick Park, a caged acre of painted asphalt, divided with drooping nets and festooned with white plates bearing the proclamation:
Tennis
Playing
Only
Then came the day care group, spilling out of their white van, ten delightfully enthusiastic ebony children, well-dressed, well-behaved, energetic and alive, a far more vigorous brood than the atomized paleface children one sees in this area, aimlessly, listlessly following some parent into the blighted garden world, seemingly addled by being disconnected from whatever computer system was passively occupying their mind.
These children are alive, though the two women escorting them, dragging heel and shuffling along like zombies with their face in a smartphone, heads crowned with $400 in Asian hair, merely follow the living to the swing sets and monkey bars.
After their recess, the children are herded back past us and they stop, insisting on watching "the men fighting."
The women admonished them, assuring them that the men were not fighting.
One of the boys disagreed, "They fightin'!"
The lead woman then asked us, "Excuse me, could you please tell the children what it is you are doing?"
After conferring briefly with the young stud who had me backed in the corner of the caged court, I assured the boys and girls as I brandished the stick, "We are not fighting with sticks!"
And we all laughed, neither the boy chieftain or the lead woman budging from their assertion, both confident that I had validated their interpretation of the crazy behavior of the two palefaces.
The lady thanked us with a smile and we were all back at our business, with one more child of this soul-erasing society hopefully convinced for good, that the only grownups that don't lie are the crazy ones.
The rest of our session was videoed by a lone white boy, a little pale-faced redhead, whose father remained forever some distance off as his boy explored the world and documented the strange simian ritual of ours, already on his own in his mind, his father seemingly content to be his shepherd rather than his guide.
The Great Train Wreck of the West
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