A FORMER tennis buddy once asked me, “Do you still play?” I remembered answering yes, at least once a year. In fairness, though, I said I have had many encounters with the wall at the net-less tennis court inside the uni campus, but that had also been one or two years ago.
He shot back, that doesn’t count, then began teasing old FB pics of me in action as, playing with the fader.
However, for regular exercise nowadays, our small family has had Saturdays and Sundays booked for our run and walk activity. This has been going on for about three straight years.
During years prior, they were just marked with loose and sporadic run appointments, meaning whenever we felt like it. Yet irregular as they were, methinks the original fun and fam run actually started ten or more years ago.
According to my unreliable talent at recall (which my partner has pointed out time and again ad infinitum), the first was when we participated in an open fun run around the university campus to support the students’ initiatives.
Then, when the city, in order to inspire running and biking among Dabawenyos, closed the Davao City Coastal Road to traffic from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m., we began to tag every Sunday from then on, as our fam date.
It’s sad to think my ability at outdoor-sy stuff is marked with my own disbelief and resentment. All because once upon a time, I was fit and able to do much more.
What had been taken for granted, so casual and ordinary then, had become a super-human feat for me now. What more of several years hence?
Facebook Memories, that stoic alarm clock which reminds one daily of what you did, whether last summer or whenever, is a blind and cruel master. Though not its intention to be so, it comes out as mean and heartless when calling you out and reminding one of how far you’ve gone through time. While it tickles one’s fancy each time, looking back likewise reminds one how old you really are, no filters. Curiosity surely killed the cat on this one.
During one time, while watching a video of an old tennis match on Facebook Memories, I had instinctively thought, I could still do that. But thinking again, I took it all back. My mind surrendered as if to declare, ” How I wish.”
In the vernacular we like to joke, “Nung adlaw” (back then), and true enough, in the earlier versions of me, I could, but that’s an ocean already under my bridge. Playing tennis the whole day is still possible, only in my imagination.
But back to that playful jog around campus long ago, I don’t remember now if that had been a 10k run because we only did the shortest 3k.
From what I remember, when my partner suggested we begin to do it regularly on weekends, with more kilometers to cover, I had said I might still be able to make it a few meters from the starting line, but then I’ll be walking the rest of the way. I might even decide to walk the rest of the way until I reach home.
