BY THE WAY: RECKLESS RACQUETBALL SHOT NOT SO EASY TO GIVE UP

Today it's giving up the shot you used to make in racquetball; tomorrow maybe it will be declining an invitation to compete in a limbo contest.

Or is it the other way around?

At any rate it's this thing we call aging. There are times when the aging process taps you on the shoulder in subtle ways. Like hair turning gray or muscle that becomes tougher to tone up.

The carefree miles you used to run turn into gravity laps you no longer care to wrestle with.

As soon as the weather gets better, I'll attack the track, you say. Or maybe you're waiting for that hectic schedule to lighten up just a tad. Then I'll sign up for some serious aerobics.

You look at a recent photograph and wonder how the lens could have produced such a poor image of the real thing. Maybe the lighting was bad. Maybe the photographer just had an off day.

But the realization that you can no longer approach a racquetball game with a sense of recklessness is not so easy to accept.

I remember a high school football coach telling us to play each and every game with "reckless abandon." I took that to mean we shouldn't worry about getting hurt. When you're a teen-ager, you love hearing that kind of stuff. Today it doesn't sound so appealing.

The other day I attempted a shot I normally make in racquetball. It's when my opponent hits the ball low off the front wall at change-up speed. He grins and waits to see if I can still get to it in time.

You have to sprint to get to the ball and then lunge to reach it before it passes you or dips below your racquet.

If you make it, you feel like a true competitor. If you miss, you feel like Don Quixote flailing away at windmills of the mind.

I sprinted and lunged and then felt a creak in the back that told me I should forget about stooping to conquer in future matches. If that would have been the end of it, I might have been able to walk away with some dignity intact.

Instead, I felt this strange sensation after getting out of the car. It was like someone removed a key joint and I lost the ability to walk without calling attention to myself.

I decided if anyone asked me what was wrong I would tell them that it was a limbo contest I'll never enter again. Fortunately, no one asked me.

My colleague Mark Bliss told me this back-breaking thing is just part of the 40-something process that somehow goes away when you get older. That sounds good, but it doesn't do much for the racquetball game or the shot once heard around your competitive world.

I want to believe I'll work my way through it. But the natural inclination is to take a few days off from exercise and watch the Bulls or the Blues do their thing.

Then you realize you haven't read a good book lately. For some strange reason I felt like reading about Don Quixote's impossible dream.

~Bill Heitland is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.