My tennis coach didn’t always want to play with us, and when he did, he could be a little impatient. He was younger than my parents, his hair was shaggy, and he had a bounce in his stride, a confidence coming out of that rust-pocked Camaro of his. There were a bunch of us kids who played tennis, and we knew if we ever stopped, our shaggy-haired tennis coach – the coolest guy around -- might stop paying attention to us.

I lived in Burlington, Massachusetts, next to something called the Burlington Country Club. The Club, we called it. It had three tennis courts, a couple swimming pools, and hundreds of members, and as a boy I knew the names of every one of them. I was there all the time, saying hi, and playing tennis. My older brother, a football and hockey player, picked on me for playing so much tennis, but I didn’t care. My hands were calloused from all the balls I hit. Tennis was my thing.

We lived so close to the Club, I’d go home between matches to drink lemonade and talk with my mom.

“Ma, I beat Derek Ogren 6-4, 4-6, 7-5. It was wicked close.”

I was totally focused. I had fire inside.

Then there was my tennis coach, Jerry. (I’ve changed his name, to protect his identity.) He wouldn’t hit with me often. He preferred to hit with adults, and who could blame him? But he would sit on the picnic bench on a small hill above the courts, and I could sit with him and talk tennis. We would all do this. We knew he loved the game.

“He had a way of getting you kids all excited about playing,” my mother said, years later. “He made you believe in yourselves. You all thought you were going on to go play Wimbledon. He was like the Pied Piper.”

I loved this childhood I had at end of the 70s and the start of the 80s, and it’s no wonder I still go back there in my mind. Recently, I was back in the flesh. To see old friends.

It took me 40 minutes to drive there from Newburyport, where I live now.

These friends I’m going to see, they’re my parents’ friends, really. Diane and Don are my parents’ age, and they played tennis with my parents when we lived in Burlington. They belonged to the Club. I hadn’t seen them in years when, last summer (2021), I was at a storytelling show, outdoors in Newton, and when I looked up I saw them: Diane and Don, from Burlington.

I never use the word delighted, especially to describe myself, but I can’t think of a better way to describe how I felt when I saw them. We talked about my dad and my mom, we talked about Burlington, about the Club, and about tennis, and Diane and Don talked about their kids, my friends. We worked out a plan, to meet at a pizza place in Burlington. My old hometown. I couldn’t wait.

The night of the pizza place, I see Diane and Don at a table. But I also see a man I can’t place.

Until someone says that man’s name.

It’s my tennis coach. The one who used to wear tennis whites, and Foster Grant sunglasses, the one who drove a Camaro, and had a toy poodle named Cocoa.

This is the same guy?

This is the coolest guy around?

After 40 years, he looks different. But that’s okay, because so do I.

“Who the hell are you?” he says to me.

Who the hell am I?

Me?

I mean, not to sound boastful, but this night, it’s kind of about me. This is about me, coming back to Burlington. Meeting here at this pizza place. This is about me.

Who the hell am I?

What the hell was wrong with this guy?

“I’m Kurt Mullen.”

He shrugs.

We order some pizza. We order a Peroni. We pass around old pictures, ones I’d never ever seen before, and I can’t get enough. When Jerry sees me in an old photo, I’m a 10-year-old boy with a tennis racquet and I have a grown-out whiffle. I’m looking at it even as he’s looking at it. I can tell, too. My old tennis coach has no idea. No idea. He doesn’t know who I am, or even who I was.

Ouch.

All those hours that I was a tennis-court rat 40 years ago, pulling on this guy’s sleeve, saying how exciting it is to be playing third doubles against Winchester, saying I’ve been practicing my topspin serve, talking about Borg and McEnroe and Connors and Chrissy Evert and Tracy Austin, it’s like this stuff never happened.

If it never happened, how could it be so important to me?

Jerry’s wife never used to come to the Club, so this evening at the pizza place I’m meeting her for the first time. She’s a nice, soft-spoken lady. I sit between them. I’m sipping my beer when Jerry leans across the table and asks his wife if she has the keys.

Yes, she says.

Then he’s asking again.

“Do you have my keys?”

Not a lot of time has passed. It’s clear to me already he’s struggling to track the talk at the table. He never answers a question either, he just deflects, and asks other people what they think.

My grandfather was this way when he became forgetful.

I could list the people I’ve watched decline in this way, beginning with my elderly grandparents. But why bother? I can be surprised by my own forgetfulness. Wait, did I brush my teeth already? It happens. It doesn’t feel good. In fact, it’s kind of spooky. But you know what? It’s not like it’s a moral failure. It just isn’t.

And why would it matter to me, how Jerry shows up tonight, if in my galaxy of stars he’s so bright?

He showed interest in me when I was young. 40 years ago, we talked about tennis. That still plays in my mind, that enthusiasm he had for the game.

During Covid, I got a chance to teach people how to tell stories. How to organize them in their minds. How to be more interesting. I had several dozen students over the year, and I felt a personal connection with almost every one of them. Which is pretty remarkable considering there was a pandemic going on and I was teaching on Zoom. I called the class, “The Art of Storytelling,” and I loved it.

I based my teaching style on my old coach, Jerry. I decided it was my job to be as enthusiastic about stories as Jerry was about tennis. Sure, I had some knowledge to impart but that knowledge goes nowhere without enthusiasm.

The night at the pizza place, I’m talking so much I barely get through a second slice. It is a great night with Diane and Don, and with Jerry and his wife, and with Joan, another friend of my parents, who used to belong to the Club.

Still, I wonder, what would it have been like if I’d gotten down here earlier? Down to Burlington to see these friends. Like, 10 years ago, when Jerry was younger? Would he have remembered me? It would’ve been a lot cooler if he had.

Still, he stays with me. In my mind. He’s enshrined up there, he’s that model that I follow. That guy who gave me something a long time ago. Showed me enthusiasm.

And it so happens that on this Thanksgiving morning, an hour from now, I’ll be at the Tennis Center of Newburyport, playing 90 minutes of singles with my good friend, Chad.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

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