ETA: Lego My Eggo *

So, you ask, what is it like to be a first year tennis hopeful at ETA, namely Enfield Tennis Academy? Listen up and you will soon learn.  I'm in my room and I don't feel so good.  Stomach trouble.  This place is awesome scary but first allow me to intro-do me to thee: I am Francine Zweig, age 12.  My sister is enrolled here too, Felicity Zweig (1). We're not rooming together like some of the other brothers and sisters do, as Felicity is older than I and has breasts already. There is a mystery surrounding this that I though while very well-developed in the mental toolbox and I can lob like no other 12 year old, which they say I could maybe be first string, 'a' team soon, and maybe even dare I hope, the Show -- but I am not so much in the pectoral region, developed. So far nobody will explain to me exactly when this will happen. Oh don't get me wrong I know where babies come from and like that;  sex education is mands (2) in all O.N.A.N. schools but they always leave out the part about the breasts. I wonder why that is but right now I have other more pressing problems on my considerable plate.

I am trying to concentrate on squeezing old tennis balls as per ETA rules to develop my forearm muscles but all I really want to do is lay down in a big human ball on my bed. Better yet in my own home with all my stuffed animals and lego (a) toys strewn over the floor, rather neatly I can proudly say, all arranged by color and size and shape. I'm never quite sure if I have the stacking order exactly right, like when there are 2 pieces exactly the same except for color and two pieces the same color but different sizes, I  don't know what to do in cases like that.  It is not in the lego manual.  But whenever I have a puzzling situation on my hands I arrange and rearrange the lego pieces and before I know it I have figured a way out of the situation. Yay legos. I have arranged and rearranged the legos every which way and cannot imagine any way to arrange them into any reasonable facsimile of breasts. Or how I would attach them to my own self so they wouldn't slip around, one up and one down, especially when it's my serve.  My particular brand of legos is all cubes and squares, so my artistic assays into breast-building end up looking like Picasso all blue in his cubism.

On my wall there are posters of my tennis idols. Serena #14 and Venus #22 as ranked overall at the time of this writing, YSPDD (3).  Steffi Graf #3 and Chris Evert #9, overall, according to the teleputer. I used to have a poster of Billie Jean King but as an idol she was lacking in the breast department, and so I gave it, the poster,  to my younger sister Fiona, who is only 5 and who would not know the difference between a breast and a tennis ball if one of them hit her in the face. Mrs. Avril Incandenza says it is really important to always use proper terminology in all things and that is why you will never hear me say tit or boob or rack or like that. It wouldn't be ladylike and also bad sportsmanship.

Something really awful happened at practice today which made me want to curl up in a ball on my bed. I was practicing serves with Gretchen Holt, when all of a sudden I felt rather faint and had to call for a time out.  I doubled over and Gretchen hopped spryly over the net to see what the problem was. I looked down and saw that I had blood running down my bare legs pooling around my shoelaces.  I have to say it was a fairly strenuous round of serves on top of running laps and up and down the hills around Enfield, which they, Schtitt and the other admins,  make us all do, and I was feeling a little off my game before I ever stripped off my jogging pants and neatly folded and laid them over a low bleacher courtside. Up in the top row of the bleachers sat a funny looking robot with a camera affixed to its head, the little red light on it blinking meaning of course the thing was on record, the camera. Gretchen leaped back over the net and  quickly back again, bringing me a towel. I mopped up my mess as best I could and resumed play, but my heart wasn't in it. She bested me but good.  I hope this doesn't ruin my chances for the 'a' team.

From brickjest.com  -- A Lego Tennis Match

A couple of courts over I saw John (NR) Wayne beating the pants off Ortho Stice. Hal Incster (not his real name, I don't think) and Michael Pemulis were on the bleachers, watching, Hal kept spitting into a rusted coffee can and Pemulis was squeezing his old tennis ball with one hand and  touching his crotch with the other. He would squeeze the ball first for like a minute and then arrange, and then switch hands and arrange his crotch with his tennis hand. That made his face go all funny.  I will have to try to puzzle that little ritual out using my lego blocks over Thanksgiving vacation.  Hal spit again, and then I saw the blinking red light on the robot's head blink off.  My legs were still all wet all bloody and I was thinking Oh Gosh I hope there are some big bandaids in the infirmary.

I see the formidable Millicent walking into the woods followed by the funny little robot. Technology, is like, wow. Forgive me my rare usages of slang, after all I'm only 12. This place has a lot of mysteries, but I am confident that in time I will figure everything out. There is a guru that lives in the boys locker room called Lyle and I am going to find out if girls  can go in there or is it a boys' club only.  I wonder if Lyle would lick  my bloody thigh sweat in exchange for information. Because what I really want to know is when will I get breasts. Something tells me he has the answer, which if at all possible I plan to avail myself of his wisdom until I can get home and consult my legos.

Outside my door I hear the thwack...thwack of towels hitting bare skin and girls giggling and the mental pock pock I'm remembering  from a long tennis volley soothes me as I clutch my stomach . Tomorrow is Eschaton.  I make a mental note to pack bandaids and an extra towel just in case, and then I slowly drift away...  

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(1) IJ pp. 757-8
(a) Check out the creative website - a man and his son have created scenes from IJ using Lego toys. http://www.brickjest.com/
(2) mands- ETA slang term for mandatory
(3) YSPDD - Per Darius Blake,  Subsidized Year of the Swamp People and Duck Dynasty.

 *courtesy: gifstumbler.com