Maybe we can be friends?
I've heard that the third date can be the turning point. Past the first-date jitters, but not to the land of couple-dom, it's often make or break time. Which I can only imagine is all well and good, but not when the date is with a game called Tchoukball.

Briefly, tchoukball is a non-agressive, non-contact team sport with an ideal of creating a harmonious society. It's played with a palm-able ball thrown at nets stationed at ends of a court. Scoring takes place for both teams on both ends. The object is to throw the ball off the net and have it bounce on the ground outside the semi-circle forbidden zone surrouding either net.

Any game with a forbidden zone has my attention. For three of the last five Friday nights, I have been playing tchoukball. On our first date, we hit it off. I was all giggles at learning a new game. It didn't hurt that my relationships with Ultimate and running made the somewhat counter-intuitive tchoukball, a little more intuitive. Within minutes, I was told that I resembled one of the older players of tchoukball. I'd tell you the name, but you wouldn't recognize it and I can't pronounce it. It was probably my skinny frame topped by a buzz and a beard, but I was moving relatively well for a first-timer. After the "feedback" time, a post-game ritual that invovles thanking one another and talking about what we enjoyed and learned, I said goodnight to tchoukball with smile and a promise of another date.

Date two didn't go nearly as well. We had played the 7 v. 7 or 9 v. 9 game with just 10 players the previous week; this time we had 6. The jitters of discovery were gone on this Friday. Instead I had the frustration of a sport that I understood, but couldn't play well. I had come with an agressive attitude, and that attitude had no outlet in a game like tchoukball. I left frustrated and unsatisfied.

Chalking it up to circumstance, I decided to give tchoukball another chance. I wanted to capture those smiles of that first night.

Last night I went to play tchoukball. I had been told repeatedly that if I would play three times then things would really start to click. Things had gone so smoothly on the first night; I scoffed at that idea, but I found out that the wily veterans might just be right. Last night, I played my best game of tchoukball. The net seemed bigger and my throws more accurate. The strange movements went from odd to nearly natural. It was an enjoyable experience, until "the talk." Of course a game doesn't care where the relationship is going. A game doesn't care whether the relationship is nearly over or about to crank it up a notch. It's a game. It doesn't have feelings. I thought it important to point that out both because of the amount of anthropomorphism that this blog supports and because this metaphor starts to break down. So, really at this point tchoukball isn't asking where the relationship is going, but instead Pierre, the coach, the closest thing in my mind to the living embodiment of the game, is asking me about my thoughts on the game.

I've been dreading this conversation since the beginning. I had hoped it would come much later, but it came sooner. I had no choice but to be honest. So when the loaded question, "What do you think of this game?" was thrown at me, I answered. "I like the game. It's amusing. It's got good people. It's heart is in the right place, but I don't think it has enough running for me." The disappointment was obvious, but what could I do?

I don't think this means there will be no more dates, but it changes things. I'm sorry tchoukball, but I just don't think you're right for me. Maybe we can just be friends.