A PICKLEBALL STORY
By Michael J. Dorfman
Although San Miguel de Allende, in Mexico, has been my home for the past ten years, it is the last three that have taught me a great deal about truly enjoying life, regardless of my chronological age.
I've always loved competitive sports. Before the age of 10, it was baseball, basketball, stickball, or punchball. In high school and university, it was football and basketball. When I was in my 40s, I was the starting pitcher on our construction company softball team. Then, it was basketball, bowling, paddleball, and ping pong. It didn't matter what "ball" it was, as long as there was competition. Although there were spurts when I was in my early 60s, playing schoolyard basketball with neighborhood friends, those opportunities ended about 20 years ago.
THE PICKLEBALL EFFECT
My wife, Delia, and I moved from Cancun to San Miguel de Allende 10 years ago. After housesitting for two years, we decided to settle down in a residential area that was within walking distance of an open-air sports complex. We both took advantage of the quarter-mile track every morning, and I would often go by myself and shoot around a basketball. One day, as I was leaving the center, I passed by some expats who were playing what seemed like a miniature version of tennis or a giant open-air version of ping pong. Although they invited me to play, I said, "no thanks." I was shy, and at that time, I wasn't very sociable. Also, watching them play, I thought I would be embarrassed since it had been decades since I had held a paddle in my hand. It wasn't the right time for me. The game, by the way, was Pickleball.
Years passed until three years ago, when a friend invited Delia to play the game. Although she had never played any sport previously, she accepted the invitation. Three weeks later, I entered as well. After learning the game's unusual rules and completing some drills, I realized that I had a hard time hitting some of the balls, especially those heading straight at me. I then remembered that I had a vision problem, which resulted from a car accident many years ago. Sadly, I realized that the problem could seriously affect my game, maybe even dashing any hopes of playing. While living in Cancun, I was diagnosed with an epiretinal membrane in my left eye. It happened in 2005 when the truck I was driving skidded on the wet highway asphalt and overturned, allowing a box filled with cement-made Mayan calendars to hit my head just above my right eye. Since then, I have experienced a blurred and wavy vision in that eye, similar to the distorted image you might see in a funhouse mirror. I ended up with poor depth perception, which, to this day, makes it challenging to calculate distances. As a result, I must be careful not to trip when walking on uneven surfaces. Also, regarding Pickleball, if the plastic ball were coming straight at me, it would be difficult to calculate when to hit it. It saddened me because I thought I might lose the chance to play a competitive sport again. I was searching for answers.
Robert, a close friend of mine and an avid tennis player, believed that if I did a few weeks of drills, hitting the ball against the wall thousands of times, there would be a chance that my brain would eventually form new synaptic connections and adapt to my eye disorder. In other words, I would be able to play a regular game. Amazingly, that happened! Now, three years later, I'm addicted to Pickleball like so many people of all ages around the globe.
PICKLEBALL'S UNIQUE WELLNESS BENEFITS
Although I am thankful that I finally found and can play a competitive sport again, I am even more grateful for the unexpected physical, mental, and emotional benefits that Pickleball offers. In the Netflix documentary series, “Live to 100 – Secrets of the Blue Zones,” I was thrilled to see that pickleball is playing a critical role in fomenting caring relationships and supporting physical, mental, and emotional health within the Loma Linda Blue Zone community.
As I look back on when I received the initial invitation to play several years ago and rejected it due to shyness and not being very sociable, I didn't know that one of the primary benefits of Pickleball was to enable authentic human connections, above and beyond the beliefs and concepts that tend to separate people. Since history shows us that humans are social animals, we thrive when we play together, just as we did when we were children. Gradually, I began to learn and experience many of the following benefits of the unique sport of Pickleball:
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