Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “ball.”

Hockey ball

When I was 11 a hockey ball hit me on the nose. This was before dangerous hitting was banned (a long time ago!) – now there are more rules. I used to love hockey but I had a tendency to daydream and this particular match was clearly no exception. The last thing I remember is Claire Fairbairn whacking the ball high up in the air. I then found myself lying on the ground, and looking up to see a bunch of people around me asking if I was okay. My nose was pouring with blood and very sore. Somehow it hadn’t broken but it had moved slightly and was slightly squint. Thankfully my mother had the foresight to demand an operation in order to bang it back to how it had been and it actually ended up even more beautiful than before (!)
I continued to play hockey and even represented my university when I was older, but I’d lost the fearlessness I needed to excel at it, which was a shame really. I now prefer safer forms of exercise such as cycling and long-distance running.

Keeping the ball out of my court

I always make sure that the ball’s never in my court. I’ve become pretty damn good over the years at whacking it back over the net so that the other person has to deal with it, in theory at least. But that person, whoever he happens to be, seldom does. Usually, he either allows the ball to disappear into the brambles at the side of the court, or when he thinks I’m not looking, picks it up, shoves it in his pocket and conveniently ‘forgets’ that it’s there, so if I have the audacity to yell over to him,
‘Oi, the ball’s in your court. Make a flaming decision!’ he says, ‘No, it isn’t. It seems to have disappeared. Funny that, isn’t it?’ (Well, he doesn’t say that, but his look conveys the emotion nicely.)
The great thing about lobbing the ball away from your side of the court is that you can travel pretty lightly. You haven’t got that annoying burden weighing you down, so you can happily get on with your life. So my advice to anyone with the ball in their court is to deal with it head-on, not by allowing it to be absorbed by the bushes or by pretending it’s not there. They’re short-term solutions and in so doing, you may create a long-term problem.

That was my post for SoCS