The tennis is going well. Today was basically a duplicate of yesterday. Blah; blah; blah. Loads of player sightings including Marcos Baghdadis; Daniel Nestor and his doubles partner Nenad Zimonjic; Robin Soderling; Marin Cilic and a national tennis broadcaster whose name escapes me. Not all of the players have household names like Nadal and Federer. Pretty much any male under the age of 30; over six feet tall walking around with a tennis bag full of racquets is probably here for the championship just not recognizable. In fact a spectator came up to me today and asked me who a player was practicing on one of the outside courts. She said she just got his autograph but couldn't make out the name. Which begs the question, if you have to ask, why bother?
Enough already about tennis. It's the people you meet that make this volunteer experience interesting. Today I was making small talk with my volunteer partner during the rain delay. Small talk is my specialty. I asked her what she did for work. She told me she worked as a writer. My dream job. She didn't write fiction or prose but had written and published a book on programming. What she told me next just blew me away. She said her brother was a journalist. She also told me he won a Pulitzer prize for a photo he took that appeared in USA Today and one that Walter Cronkite said was worthy of a Pulitzer and encouraged him to submit the photo to be considered for the prize. I am thinking Pulitzer? The late Walter Cronkite who was until his death, the most trusted man in America. That in itself impressed me; however she had me at journalist. She had my undivided attention and anyone who knows me knows I have the attention span of a gnat. I asked her to tell me about the prize. It was a photo. The photo was one taken by Canadian photographer Paul Watson, a.k.a. her brother. It was of a dead American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. It spelled the beginning of the end for U.S.-U.N. peacekeeping force. That was 1994 and her brother's photo caused then President Bill Clinton to withdraw troops from Somalia and other countries followed suit. This same brother was instrumental in the making of the movie Black Hawk Down. After I picked my jaw up off the ground I asked her what her brother was doing now. I mean how do you top that? She said he was in Afghanistan.
Yesterday I met a weather person and today a writer and sister of a Pulitzer Prize winning photo journalist. I can't wait to see who I meet tomorrow. I wonder if she went home and blogged how she met an unemployed, overly cheerful HR person. I wonder if anyone will ever ask me for my autograph. Anyone other than the waiter handing me my bill at TGIF Fridays.
Oh and I ran into my old tennis instructor in the crowd. He didn't recognize me at first. My hair was hiding inside a hat. I told him he wouldn't recognize my game now either. He got me when I was really green. Now I'm a seasoned player. Well I play during the season. Same thing, right?
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