Insomniac waxes nostalgic

I didn’t sleep at all last night. I can’t understand it either, because I took a pill. I may have to double the dose tonight, I don’t know.

The volleyball season is rapidly approaching. I’d like to say I’m filled with excitement and that I’m giddy with anticipation. But that’d make me sound a little too 10-year-old girlish, so I better not. I can’t say I’m all that worked up about it anyhow. I’m sure that’ll change, but for now it really just seems like too much of the same old same old, with some stupid rules changes thrown in to annoy me.

It makes me wax nostalgic for my first encounters with the sport, and nothing beats waxing nostalgic (unless nostalgic doesn’t want to be waxed). I can trace my interest in volleyball back to a company picnic in the 80s. I’d known about volleyball before then, of course. I’d even played it. But on that particular day, several of us decided to up the level of intensity -- hell, we were actually setting each other and diving for the ball -- and in doing so we were treated to a thin slice of what the sport really has to offer. I think we probably ticked off quite a few of our fellow employees as well, but too bad for them.

Before long, we had a company team in a bar league. Then I was playing at the Y, where I met my wife (who was not my wife at the time I met her, because that wouldn’t make sense now would it?). Then I was on a USAV team in a really ugly uniform. It didn’t take too long after that before I had a right shoulder that was basically useless. I became a setter for a while, but I was destined to take a seat as a spectator -- and that’s a poor substitute for actually playing.

Maybe I need to crash a picnic somewhere?