After all these years of not playing racquetball, I’m finally ready to give up the racquetball bag.
I’m not too old to play. I could still do it. But there aren’t any racquetball courts within hundreds of miles of here. And there is that issue of the neck surgery. With four vertebrae fused together I would be less competitive because I can’t just glance back over my shoulder anymore to track the ball or the other player, but I could still run around and whack the ball and have fun.
I would love that, but that brings me back to the neck thing. The surgeon warned me that having those vertebrae fused would put an extra strain on the adjacent joints and we’d have to keep an eye on them. I probably don’t want to put that sort of rotational stress on the part of my neck that still works.
It didn’t take me all these years to recognize that playing racquetball again isn’t a good idea. It’s more that I didn’t want to acknowledge it so clearly that I would give up the bag and all the gear that goes in it. Shoes. Racquets. Balls. Gloves. I’m okay with it now. The racquetball career is over. And even without racquetball, I still have plenty on my plate.