Is This the Hill You Want to Die On -- Towel Hill?

On Gyms, Amenities and Being the Last Person on Earth to Try Pickleball

Photo by No Revisions on Unsplash

I’ve returned to the YMCA for the fifth or sixth time since COVID and as they always say, the fifth or sixth time is the charm.

The reason I kept dropping out was that the Y, after COVID, cut a lot of its classes.  They’d also stopped providing towels.

I live a block from the Y, you might think it would not be a big deal for me to bring my own, but it was the principle of the thing. This Y has a pool and steam room and sauna and showers, and if you’re offering that stuff, it’s part of the social contract that people do not stand there and drip dry. You provide towels. It’s like, if you open a hamburger stand, you provide ketchup.

Sure, the sane part of my brain said, “Joyce, is this the hill you want to die on? Towel Hill?”

But the crazy part, which had probably been watching a war movie, shouted, “HELL, YES!!! We are taking Towel Hill, troops, and then we are going to sit in the sauna and check out each other’s bodies sideways and figure out how drunk that woman was when she got those tattoos. Then we are going to pick up some thick, snowy white, fresh out of the laundry towels and DRY OURSELVES! Then I’ll have lunch with a friend and I won’t need to explain to the waiter who’s seating me that I need an extra chair for my towels.”

“Are they wet towels? Sorry, we don’t allow wet towels in the dining room.”

“I wouldn’t say wet. Maybe damp.”

“Sorry, lady, if we do it for you, we’ll have to do it for everybody. And frankly, we’re going for more of an Equinox crowd. You know how you always wonder if anyone orders bottled rather than tap? They do.”

Still, you can only go so long without going to the gym before bad things happen. Your ass sags, you have trouble opening the applesauce jar, you pause climbing up the subway stairs and people behind you get annoyed and start muttering ominously. They are either normal New Yorkers or a crazy who will kick you down the stairs onto the tracks. The Number 2 Train will be pulling in and your last thought will be, “Why didn’t I go back to the Y when they were having that pay for three months, get one month free spec—-"

SCHPLOTT!!!

Also, I didn’t want to be the last person in America to try pickleball. It’s all over. You can go anywhere in the country, listen for an annoying thwacking sound, and follow it to a lawyer who is bringing action.  And now they were playing it at my Y.

“Just come in early,” my friend Tracy, AKA Tracy Who Bikes up Mountains You Have to First Bike Fifteen Miles to Get To, tells me. “The pro will get you going.”

This is the first thing that happens when you learn pickleball: The instructor says, “So, you’ve played tennis and ping pong...” and when you say “No” they think, “Oh, shiiiit.”  It’s like bringing your kid to preschool and saying they’re not toilet trained, except in that case, they’ve got an out.

Then – we’re back in Pickleball School --  the instructor says, “Those orange lines are the pickleball court. Those other orange lines close to the net are called the kitchen. You’re not allowed in the kitchen if you’re hitting the ball. You follow the two-bounce rule…”

And you look at the instructor blankly. And he gives you a large, rectangular paddle and a plastic, open weave ball and says, “You’ll pick it up.”

Then the instructor puts you in a group with three other people. They’re all beginners your age,  except that they’ve played tennis and ping pong and basketball all their lives. They understand the finer points of games with nets, such as it isn’t enough to hit the ball, it’s being able to hit it to a certain spot, which does not include the court next to you.  All those formative years you stayed in your room reading as your mother yelled, ‘Don’t sit in the house all day with your nose in a book!’ She was right. And now, she’s gone and you’re so rattled you’re talking about yourself second person.

“You’re waiting for the ball to come to you,” the instructor yells at me from the sidelines. “Run to it!”

This confuses me.

“Of course, I’m waiting for it to come to me,” I think. “Why should I run to the ball if the ball is going to come to me? I can stand right here and figure out exactly where it’s going to hit.”

I play two games and I think I’m coming along great. After each game, people on the sidelines say, “Don’t be discouraged.”

This makes me reassess everything.

“I wasn’t discouraged until you suggested I should be discouraged,” I think “Now I have no option but to slink off to the showers.”

But the showers are not a possibility because the Y has no towels.