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Was playtime this fun the first time around?

By MOLLY MOORHEAD
Published September 26, 2005

Here's a life lesson that bears repeating: You're never too old to play games.

At least, I'm not. In fact, the more energy I devote to playtime, the more crucial it becomes to my well-being.

I found a new love in my life this spring, in the form of kickball. That same schoolyard game that follows, roughly, the rules of baseball, except you kick a big, bouncy red ball rather than hit a little, hard white one.

In Tampa, I joined the local league of WAKA (that's the World Adult Kickball Association), an organization whose name alone gives me joy. I signed up with a couple of friends, and by season's end, I had made a few dozen more.

We gathered at a city park every Thursday evening and for five joyous innings kicked and fielded and cheered and ran.

But, because we are schoolchildren no longer, the rules of conduct varied slightly. Most notably, we carried our beers onto the field with us (whereas at my grade school, they had to be left in the dugout).

We played a slew of games - I'm not sure how many - and kept standings and results. None of that mattered much. To wrap up the season, we played a daylong double-elimination tournament on a blistering July day. My team, the Tighty Whiteys, played a dismal first game, then pulled it together to win our next three. In the end, we folded to the fearsome Drunk Friendz and to our collective dehydration and heat exhaustion.

As I walked off the field that day, a group from another team sat in lawn chairs watching a game still in progress. One guy - I wish I knew his name - looked at me and asked if I had been the one playing second base.

Yes, that was me.

I had turned in a mixed performance on the field. I always make mistakes because I get nervous when the ball comes near me. But I got off a couple of good bunts. (The bunt is especially effective in kickball: Not only does it advance the runner, but the ball is so awkward to field that the kicker usually makes it safely to first.) I think I might have scored once, and I made a nice out or two at second base.

And during our final game, I caught two balls that shot over the pitcher's head and landed under my chin. They weren't floating pop flys; they were firebolts. I swear I managed both catches because my team had fallen so far behind and my energy was so depleted, I just wanted us to get the heck off the field.

Anyway, it was these catches, I presume, that made this guy notice me.

With his hand raised for a high five, he grinned and said, "You're a stud."

The best compliment of my life.

But since that soaring moment, the weeks - Thursday evenings especially - have felt a touch empty. I miss my team. I miss the game. I need my playtime.

So a few Fridays ago, in downtown St. Petersburg, I took up a new sport: shuffleboard.

I'm pretty sure I had never set foot on a shuffleboard court before that night. But having written about Zephyrhills for the past three years, I believed it to be a boring time-passer for the senior members of the community.

What a dipstick I was.

The St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club is a historic landmark in the city, but its future was uncertain until this year, when a group of youngish activists mobilized to revive its place in the local culture.

Now it's the place Friday nights. The twentysomething crowd mixes with the fiftyish set sending discs gliding down the concrete alleys. Over the old club's sound system pump the tunes of some very musically sophisticated iPod owner. The scene is laughably passe yet unabashedly now.

Having played only twice, I cannot yet sum up my shuffling skills. I'm still learning the defensive side of the game - knocking opponents' discs out of scoring position and such. And I'm loving the lingo - "in the kitchen" and "drop the hammer."

The utter release of it is indisputable. Is it possible to feel stress during even the most intense shuffleboard match? I believe not.

The rumor around WAKA is that the next kickball season will start sometime this fall. I can hardly contain my schoolgirl giddiness.

Until then - in fact, until I'm about 84 - I have shuffleboard, and I'm searching for ever more means of diversion. Do my parents still have that old croquet set?

The game hardly matters. I just want to play.

[Last modified September 26, 2005, 01:18:19]