Recently, I was on the tennis court (try to suppress your shock), working on some forehand targeting with the ball machine, and I overheard a conversation on the next court that shed an even brighter spotlight on something that I feel on a daily basis.

A married couple was hitting balls with their daughter. Mom and Dad were on one side of the net, and the daughter was on the other.

There is an area of the tennis court between the baseline and the service box that is generally referred to as “no man’s land.” A player is too close to the net to comfortably hit a groundstroke and too far from the net to hit a clean volley. This area is generally avoided because it puts a player immediately on the defensive and prevents any momentum toward a “striking” strategy.

It’s easy to get caught in “no man’s land” with bad footwork, a lack of anticipation, or poor court awareness. It happens, but it usually results in the loss of a point or, at the very least, some sloppy, haphazard ball striking in a desperate attempt at recovery.

Anyway…this dad was giving his wife (who he nauseatingly kept calling “Mom”) some grief and a playful ribbing by calling her out on her constant drifting into “no man’s land.” His daughter was able to easily send shots right past her and keep her on the back foot because of her poor positioning.

At one point, the dad took a beat and proudly shouted, “You’re standing there so much, instead of no man’s land, we should call it Mom’s Land.”

I kid you not, this “mom” literally doubled over with laughter, dropped her racquet on the ground, and guffawed so intensely she could barely take in oxygen. Between streaming tears of hysterical howling, she kept repeating the words “Mom’s Land” like it was the funniest and most clever thing she’s ever heard.

Now, even on my most generous scale, this “joke” was a D-, at best. It wasn’t funny, witty, original, entertaining, or sharp in any possible way, on any possible planet.

But this woman reacted like she was sharing a court with Delirious-era Eddie Murphy. I stood, stone-faced, utterly baffled at how anyone could possibly find this man and his “comedy” even remotely amusing.

It was hard to hide my transparently confused, obvious physical reaction to this utter lack of humor, but this episode served as further supporting evidence of the constant sense of total disconnection I feel in a world I can’t seem to understand.

So many people seem to be functioning in a general state of mild acceptance and easy conformity…and boy, do the laughs come aplenty when the bar rests mere inches from the ground.

Ignorance is bliss, and we have a society doing everything in its power to keep that blindfold tightly secured.

I suppose it’s a choice between living inside a carefully curated Matrix-style simulation or the conscious, deliberate effort to embrace the world as it is, with all its naked pain and bruises and torture and lies.

But I’m a Taurus, so when the option to select a pill presents itself, the bull will always choose red.

Adolescence Interrupted

…and stop killing animals.