Grace Under Badminton

I am not, nor have never I been, a graceful person. And, more than likely, I never will be. Usually this only affects me in minor ways. I trip a lot, fall down a lot, and generally make a damn fool of myself all over the place. Which is cool, you know, I’m at peace with it. No horrible results and I end up with a nice story to tell the next day, to the neverending amusement my friends, who like stories in which I fall down. They’re an interesting bunch

On the other hand, there are the times of ridiculous injury from my lack of grace that are less “haha, funny” and more “haha, damn yo, that sucks.” Over the course of my life, I have broken my nose on three separate occasions, all as a relatively young child. Back then I used to tend to fall down flights of stairs unlike now, when I just fall down for no apparent reason on flat surfaces.

Later in life, practicing football, I seriously broke my left leg, requiring a cast for 4 months and another month of little to no standing. Following that incident, I took the stance that, considering my inability to not die during physical activity, I would just bow out of all sports involving physical contact.

This was a good strategy, it seemed, and I didn’t have any real tough problems for a long while. Then, my senior year in high school, I decided that it would be a good idea to try out for the track team. I am a fast runner, when the occasion requires, and it really doesn’t require physical contact. I would be fine.

On the first night of practice (on the first sprint, for that matter) I took ten good strides, fell flat on my face and skidded across the track for ten feet or so. The result: the majority of the skin on the left side of my body staying behind on the ground that night, a huge bill for bandages, antibiotics, and two weeks of wandering around school looking like…well, like I had skidded down a track for ten feet. The scar from the incident still remains with me today, the three scars actually, along with a secondary mental scar that indicated that all sports, physical contact or otherwise, should be struck from the list of things that Jason is allowed to do. Refine “sports” to “physical activites of any kind” and you might have an idea of my mindset.

College brought on a whole new set of graceless injuries that are so numerous I’m wondering if there’s really a point to writing them all down. To save time, we’ll go with the list:

Chipped front tooth (my inability to high step march)
Near gouging of my left eye (ran over by bass drum)
Severely burned right hand (microwaves, soup and a klutz)
Extended fall down the steps of Dallas Hall (most embarrassing moment of my entire life.)
Etc (I’m too depressed to continue, really)

All this rambling on to say that, despite my inclination towards never leaving the room or walking around, I took up a new sport this semester. Badminton. Seriously, y’all don’t know what you’re missing. It’s frickin’ awesome. Small rackets, tiny little thing to hit (wonderfully called “the shuttlecock”), a little court, and it’s all indoors.

Fast-paced and full of ridiculous rules, Badminton is the bastard child of tennis and volleyball, only you don’t have to worry about fast moving rubber balls, hot sand, or crazed fans. Instead, you worry about taking a shuttlecock smash to the face and losing an eye, hitting yourself with your own racket, your partner hitting you with their racket, or the hard gym floor when you dive for a shot.

Because I dive for shots a whole lot. Okay, “dive for a shot” is a nice way of saying “fall down after lunging for a shot and losing my balance,” but the fact still remains. Um. Yes. Anyway. I look very dedicated, and no serious injuries have resulted yet. My knee is very sore and I bruised my wrist last week, but these are minor considerations in the hunt for badminton glory.

Wellness class has suddenly taken a competitive turn and I’ve got the fever to dominate. As the professor predicted on the first day, we have developed our own badminton nemeses, whom we constantly battle for bragging rights and small monetary wagers. And while I am near the bottom of the class in terms of badminton winning percentages, I’m still always very psyched to go out there and try my luck. Because until the day comes in which I am horribly disfigured in a shuttlecock related catastrophe: (and that day will come, of course. It’s only a matter of when.) I love this game.