Tennis Ball Guy

In the middle of the particular set of townhomes where I currently live, there is a pond. I assume this pond was man-made to make the area of identical houses and close proximity to dozens of strangers more palatable. The children of the heavily-smoking adults who live here (of which there are many) congregate around this water on every decent afternoon and go about their (loud and annoying) childhood shenanigans behind everyone's homes. Now I have many problems with this, but that's a rant for a different day. It also just so happens the window in my room overlooks this pond, lending itself to plentiful creeping opportunities, which of course I take advantage of. I love creeping.

A few evenings ago, I was sitting at my window on my bed, trying not to slide off because the top mattress is quite loose. Anyway, I notice at the pond's edge, right behind our house, a teenage guy with a baseball bat and a tennis ball. He was alone, oddly enough, considering it was a nice night. Maybe all the munchkins were off eating their dinners of dinosaur chicken nuggets and mac and cheese, whatever. DANG that actually sounds really good, doesn't it? As I'm watching from my second-story window, this guy tosses the ball up and takes a swing at it. It was obvious he was trying to hit it clear over the pond (I don't know why though, the other side consists of a bunch of construction...). Despite his attempt at impressive manliness, the poor guy only tapped the tennis ball about two feet into the water, not even far enough to make him stretch to get the ball back from the edge. I can't lie, I laughed. I really shouldn't have, because I have experience throwing to myself and trying to hit, and it is DAMN HARD. Seriously, try it. If you don't have baseball or softball experience, you will fail. Inevitably. Anyway, I don't think he heard me laugh, but I quickly returned to my book just in case.

When I braved another look to check his progress, he was gathering his pride and giving it another go. This time he swung and actually connected, but unfortunately the tennis ball splashed into the water about a yard short of the edge on the other side. It bobbed there a few times, with the guy just standing there, considering his options. He then nonchalantly sauntered around the pond, pretending like he wasn't doing something inexplicable and kind of weird and possibly embarassing. On the far side, the guy attempted to use his bat to swat the ball closer to him, but that only seemed to aggravate the thing into not cooperating. His next move was to step onto some kind of mini-island a few feet into the water. Honestly, I have no idea what that thing was. Frankly, it looked like a crocodile. So we're going to assume now this kid keeps a pet crocodile in the pond outside my house. That seems like the logical next step. So from the back of his crocodile Timothy, he was able to once again retrieve his tennis ball. Obviously, so far his endeavours have not been entirely fruitful, but did this stop tennis ball guy? Of course not.

But it should have. He gave the ball another hit, but this time I think the thing was just vengeful, because it fell right smack dab in the middle of the pond. At this point, I start laughing again, and return once more to my book, because my window's open and I don't want him to know how much he just embarassed himself. I took another few glances over the next few minutes, and found him angrily throwing nearby rocks in the general area of where the ball floated, in the vain attempt of getting it to float to an edge. When I looked again after a few minutes, and the guy had gone home with his ball still floating out of reach. Poor guy.

This post didn't really have a point, but I just kind of wanted to share that story.