So, this “Tom Paris tennis” thing. What’s the deal with that, anyway? Sounds like a load of holodeck nonsense if you ask me. Something cooked up by someone with too much time on their hands. You’re not gonna find that down at the local courts, I’ll tell you that much.
But it did get me thinking, oddly enough, about my own disastrous run-in with actual, real-world tennis. Not the Starfleet kind, mind you. Just me, a perfectly good racket, and a spectacular lack of talent that became legendary for all the wrong reasons.
My Brilliant Tennis Career (Spoiler: It Wasn’t)
Right, so one summer I got it in my head I was gonna be a tennis ace. Get fit, look the part, you know the drill. How hard could it be? You whack a ball, it goes over, they whack it back. Simple. Or so I thought.
The Setup – All Gear, No Idea
First off, I splurged on a racket. One of those fancy ones that practically screams “I know what I’m doing!” (Narrator: He didn’t). Got the bright yellow balls, the sweatbands – the works. I was basically ready for Wimbledon, in my own mind at least.
- Watched a ton of videos. Those pros make it look like dancing. Lies, all lies.
- Actually booked a court. Felt like a big shot.
- Dragged my pal Chris along. Pretty sure he only came for the comedy gold, and boy, did I deliver.
The Cold, Hard Slap of Reality
Stepping onto the court was fine. Then I tried to serve. Sweet mercy. That ball had a vendetta. It aimed for the fences, the trees, passing cars – anything but the opponent’s side of the net. One shot nearly took out a pigeon mid-flight; the poor bird probably needed therapy afterwards.
Chris was trying, bless him, not to bust a gut laughing. “Your technique is… expressive,” he’d gasp. Expressive? It was pure chaos. If Tom Paris himself had witnessed it, he’d probably have said, “That’s not maverick, that’s just bad!” That, right there, was my version of “Tom Paris tennis” – all unpredictable flailing, zero finesse.
It wasn’t tennis. It was a public spectacle of incompetence. Me, sweating buckets, chasing balls like a headless chicken, while my expensive white outfit rapidly lost its dignity.
The Aftermath and the So-Called Wisdom
After a couple more sessions of terrorizing the local wildlife and providing Chris with enough embarrassing stories to last a lifetime, I quietly retired the fancy racket. It now lives in the garage, a monument to my athletic delusions. Some things, you just gotta accept you’re terrible at. And for me, that’s tennis.
Was it a complete waste? Nah. Chris still gets a chuckle out of it. And I learned a valuable lesson: looking like you know what you’re doing and actually knowing are light-years apart. My tennis career was less of a career and more of a brief, very public blooper reel.
So, “Tom Paris tennis.” For me, it’s just a fancy name for trying something new, being utterly awful at it, and somehow managing to laugh it off. Maybe. After the bruises heal. Next time, I’m sticking to darts. Less running. And the target is stationary. Mostly.
