Paris and Nicole go to Tennis Camp

In high school I was on the track team for a day. I wanted to be a sprinter. I also wanted to be Mariah Carey, and yes as you can tell, I was delusional back then as well. You can easily ascertain how well the track team went for me based on my first statement, so instead I decided to stick to my musical talents and leave sports for another day. That fateful day, was this weekend... As Meredith and I stumbled into Tennis Camp with our McDonald’s bags, large dark sunglasses, and platform heels half an hour late because we were busy shopping at Woodbury Commons. Priorities people! First we couldn’t find the office to check in, then I couldn’t find our room. Basically as we walked up to the courts for our first afternoon of instruction, late and still wearing our obnoxious sunglasses, right past all of the pros, I only wish I could properly describe to you what their faces looked like. Some kind of awesome mix of horror, amusement, curiosity, and comedy. Or maybe they’d just never seen anyone with the audacity to wear shorts, which according to my brother is against ladies tennis etiquette. I actually do own a tennis skirt, however I purchased it many years ago because I thought it was really cute as a skirt and proceeded to cut out those pesky shorts that came sewn into it. Yea, I was pretty much regretting that at this point. However after my weekend at the most awesomest place on earth, I feel like a kid again on the last day of summer camp. I miss my friends (LeeAnn, Dirk, Andrea, Rita, and the posse from Staten Island), I miss my counselor (that would be our super cool pro Vic) and I miss camp. In an effort to keep the spirit alive until we hopefully return in November, I give you my Top Five Total Tennis memories from Labor Day weekend.

5 – We desperately needed bug spray, shampoo, snacks and other assorted pharmacy merchandise. Vic offered to bring bug spray because he didn’t want to give us directions to CVS because he thought we’d get lost... Which, we did. Even though we told the people at our dinner table that we were fine because “we have GPS.” Once we finally located the CVS, because the GPS led us to an Eckerd that was no longer at that location, we decided on the fantastically healthy snacks of Pringles and Oreos to go with our McDonalds from earlier in the day. You’d think we were at Fat Camp instead of Tennis Camp. Arriving back at camp, we watched the US Open and saw a big Oreo logo on the backboards... Turning to Meredith I said “OMG look, we’re sponsored by Oreo too!”

4 – The tennis racket that can technically be called mine is metallic blue with multi-color strings and designed for a 14 year old. So naturally I decided not to show up at camp with that hot mess and bring rackets that belonged to my Mom and Dad. On the first day while learning how to serve in my private lesson, Vic noticed that the racket I was using had a huge crack in the frame. I contend that the crack was most likely already there the whole time, even though it could have happened minutes prior when Vic asked if I could swing fast and get that “whoosh” sound... And I whooshed the racket right into my left knee. I probably would have been better off with my child size racket! Luckily Vic didn’t fail sharing in kindergarten and allowed me to use his extra racket all weekend.

3 – After 5 hours of tennis a day, honestly the only thing I can say I really wanted to do more than anything else in the world was watch more tennis on TV. Or not. I missed the Obama acceptance speech because the one TV at camp was playing the US Open. Then the next night, Steve-o from Scarsdale was none too happy about missing the Mets game seeing as Beltran hit a Grand Slam in the ninth with two outs to give them the lead. However, we were once again forcibly watching the US Open. Steve-o was monitoring the game on my Blackberry... That he refused to give back to me for 20 minutes even as Meredith and I repeatedly told him we wanted to go to sleep and his wife scolded him “Steve, they want to leave.”

2 – We went there to play tennis and play we did. When I wasn’t eating net, and hearing Vic repeat my mantra of the weekend “get out that net”, both Meredith and I hit shots that went hole in one right back into the ball hopper. I hit almost every part of poor Vic’s body, including one shot that may or may not have made him sterile. But the best was when he hit a couple straight to Mer, then one off to the side that she watched go by in shock and said “I have to run? A little warning would be nice...”

1 – Saturday night we had a dance in the barn. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d say! Apparently while I was busy auditioning for The Grind and dragging along unsuspecting Vic to get low, low, low, low, low, low,... Meredith was playing pool with some guy named Mark and Winston from Jamaica, who said things to me that were vastly inappropriate and will not be repeated. Later in the night when we were introduced to Vic’s secret dance move... That should really remain a secret, I decided that maybe we could trade tennis lessons for dance lessons and that way he’d have some tips to use when he, as Meredith proclaimed “practices in front of his dolls”...

Greatest weekend ever.