But why a pickle? My buddy Chat GPT gave me a bunch of stories – it may or may not have been rooted in German folklore. Or a downright marketing ploy. Or just one of those if it looks like a pickle, acts like a pickle, and glimmers through the tree branches like a pickle, then it’s probably just a pickle.
While certainly not a woo-woo by any stretch of the soul, I do have this side of me that loves to find the seridipitousness in everyday living. Like when you get frustrated waiting to make a left turn so you go right instead even though you have to go three miles to the next U-Turn. And then there it is, a Ben & Jerry’s calling your name. Or when you make a last minute switch and go to the Stop n’ Shop instead of the Shop Rite and lo and behold, there is Jean in the frozen food aisle. Or when you randomly choose a place to play pickleball, despite there being many way more convenient facilities, and it becomes the home-away-from-home you never knew you were missing.
I’ve written about “these people” before. About the text chains that bing incessantly, about our obsessive need to play through sore elbows, weak knees, and clearly transmittable diseases (just kidding, I only did that once). But as our friendship has grown, so has our socializing and we recently took it off the courts for some holiday fun we never knew we were missing.
The first party was at the lovely Lori’s house on the Monday following Thanksgiving. As one might imagine, I went kicking and screaming. Who needs more food, more socializing, more crap coming into the house? The crap being the white elephant / grab bag / Chinese auction – whatever you want to call it gift that you know you are not going to want and before you get there are already thinking about where, when and how soon you’re going to re-gift it.
But as these things tend to go, it was a hoot. Twenty of us gathered with our gifts, some of which were highly coveted, swapped and traded multiple times. I still haven’t admitted (because you didn’t have to) which gift I brought because, despite going over the price limit, it was neither oohed nor ahhed over and was received with a forced smile and hope for a steal that did not come. Next year I will gift gummies.
Two weeks later, Patty hosted a hoopla at the family bar – not as in the bar where the family drinks together, though I’m sure they do -- but rather the bar at which they are proprietors. There was a lot of alcohol and a lot of happy over-tipped Uber drivers and a lot of loose tongues. We barely recognized each other in our glitter tops, lipsticked lips, and pointy-toed heels having spent all our time together in leggings, hair clips, and T-shirts.
Which led to serotonin-fused sentiments as I looked around at this group of happy picklers and wondered how the heck I ever got sucked into their circle.
Despite my widely diverse friends and interests, I have always been intimidated by wealth, looks, and age even though I know full-well that I could be a whole lot poorer, uglier, and older. But you feel what you feel and the first step in getting over these things is admitting your problem publicly.
Or as an alternative, you could just meet on an even playing field.
When we first became friends, which was kind of a gradual glomming on process, we knew virtually nothing about each other. Sure, we could count wrinkles on our faces, batwings under our arms, skunk stripes when we didn’t get to the beauty parlor in time, but we didn’t know exactly how old we all were. Some of us believed that our Amazon labels could actually be mistaken for the Lulu logo. No one knew who owned the sole Hyundai in the parking lot. We hadn’t yet Zillowed each other’s homes to find out who lived in the multi-million dollar mansions and who paid a mere one point two for their second homes. We didn’t know who worshipped Trump and who, under different circumstances, would have immediately nixed them from their contact list.
As our friendships grew, so did our awareness. We learned that many of us gravitated toward the same OrthoHeel court shoes. Because guess what – even the youngest and spryest amongst us have bunions. We suspected that the Hyundai girl may or may not have been the one who stuck the magnetic flowers on the Escalade who got the last parking spot in front of the tile store. And when the anti-Trumpers were unearthed, we were teased not chastised. Though I must admit, the liberals may have done a little more chastising of our counterparts because hey, that’s just who we are.
We learned that even the most successful of us have screwed up our kids, our marriages, and our careers. We have had cancer and knee replacements, we’ve become widows, been cheated on. We play in a band as well as dabble in mahjong and canasta. We go to the US Open, watch nine-year olds shoot hoops, and support our Nets, Jets, Mets or Knicks, Giants, Yankees with an occasional Red Sox fan thrown into the mix. We watch all the latest Netflix series and read all the Reese Witherspoon book club suggestions without shame. We travel far and wide – to Europe, to all-inclusive Mexican resorts, and go camping in the Adirondacks. We have lost our mothers, our friends, our siblings, and our dogs. Maybe even a cat or two. We buy into overpriced facial creams, get Botox, and what’s that other thing called, Michelle?
We have attended wedding proposals overseas, married off our kids in both posh country clubs and ashrams. We have cringed and cheered for those same kids as they got their dream jobs that turned into nightmares, moved into their fifth-floor walk-ups, stating through gritted teeth that at least THEY got all new furniture while WE had to use our great-grandmother’s sofa until we were twice their age. We've comforted those kids as they broke up with the loves of their lives, keeping to ourselves that we knew all along it was just a divorce waiting to happen.
We have gotten glimpses into our past lives, learning that all that glitters is not gold. We have twisted our ankles, tweaked our shoulders, gone full-out, down on the court with a bum knee, ball in the eye, the head, the boob, and yet we get up and do it again. We have learned the humiliation of the dreaded pickle and how to turn it up in the next game to play it right into someone else’s hands.
We spend more money on the sport than we do on Amazon packages. Though, admittedly many of those packages do include pickleball paraphernalia. We are slammers, dinkers, and just happy to get it over the netters. We are as different as different can be. But as we play on, we learn that we are more alike that we realize. At least in our hearts, where it matters most.
As the world celebrates this crazy, over-hyped season in so many different traditions, my wish is that we all find our pickle in life. It may not look like a pickle, it may not act like a pickle, and it may not glimmer through the tree branches like a pickle. But sometimes you find your pickle where you least expect it. And with an open mind and an open heart, it could change your life. And with any luck, maybe even the world around you.
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