Point of View: Honest Cheating

I can’t wait to try out my new Signum Pro Tornado strings in a stroke-of-the-week clinic tomorrow. The website says you will “wreak havoc” with them. 

The prospect of wreaking havoc, nay, of wreaking anything — aside, of course, from simply reeking — at my age is beguiling. I may not be very intelligent, but I know what kicking butt is. The secret, of course, lies in the way you do it, as in “it’s not so much what you say, but the way you say it.”

In this regard, I could take a cue from Confucius, of whom I wrote last week, who said nations decay when their manners do. I have been, I confess, churlish in victory and surly in defeat on the tennis court, raging, raging against the loss of a set — not a good role model for our polity at all. I must reform, I can’t reform. No matter, fail better at reforming. After all, it is time, now that I have nine — count ’em, nine — grandchildren, to grow up.

“You are a horrible human being,” Mary concluded the other night, with a certain frightening finality, as I argued (with her having already been backgammoned) that since one of the double 6s I’d rolled was only slightly canted, I shouldn’t have to roll again. “We talked about this yesterday. When a die doesn’t lie flat, the roller has to roll again.” 

She’s hawkeyed when it comes to my moves, constantly double-checking me.

“It’s honest cheating,” I said in my defense during a telephone conversation the other night with our daughter Johnna, and, bless her, she understood. And laughed too. She knows I’m a horrible human being, but that that’s . . . okay.

No, it’s not okay, and I do mean to do something about it. Yes, I will wreak havoc with my Signum Pro Tornado strings, but with grace, modesty, and fellow feeling. You’re going to love it.