Racqueteering
Inquisitive interviewer Shorten Humourless chats to innovative inventor Simon Sideways about his latest research projects.
SH: So, Simon, you’re known as the clever clogs of lateral thinking and out-of-the-box, blue-sky brainstorming. What’s your latest project?
SS: Glad you asked Shorten. Anything can be reimagined, re-conceived, radically reused, reconstructed or turned and twisted for a new task.
SH: OK Simon I get the idea. But let’s get specific. Exactly what are you working on right now?
SS: Since you want to get personal, how’s your tennis going?
SH: My tennis? As Tina Turner said: “What’s tennis got to do with it? What’s tennis but a forty-love emotion?”
SS: There’s the problem you see, Shorten. You must serve with verve, volley like Polly. Blast the baseline of traditional tennis thinking and make every shot a ring-a-ding, razzle dazzle winner.
SH: OK, I’ve got that bit. So, I guess your latest project has something to do with …. tennis?
SS: That’s right, or left, depending on whether you are right or left-handed. But actually, it’s more refined than just tennis in general. It’s about alternative uses for tennis racquets.
SH: But a tennis racquet is a highly developed item of specialised sports equipment that is designed for one thing only: hitting a tennis ball.
SS: Come on Shorten, smash those overhead stereotypes, ace those anachronisms. A tennis racquet has multiple uses, limited only by your feeble imagination.
SH: Name one, before I pass out from slogan overdose.
SS: Right. Get your head around this. First, tennis players hate rain.
SH: Of course.
SS: Now 99% of tennis players buy a waterproof vinyl cover with their racquet so that they have …. an instant umbrella. Just hold the racquet and cover over your head, angled slightly behind you for the drips and hey presto, you’re rain proof. And remember, you can’t play tennis with an umbrella.
SH: OK 15-0 to you. What else?
SS: Think of the general construction of a tennis racquet – it’s a mesh of tough strings in a frame. It’s a net with a handle.
SH: So?
SS: So, you can catch things with it. My local lake is full of catfish: slimy and ugly, but good eating.
SH: So you catch catfish with a tennis racquet?
SS: Sure. It’s best in the summertime, when the fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high, especially if your daddy’s rich and your ma is good lookin’.①
When the fish jump out of the water, just catch them with your racquet, then clean, cook and eat. Should be easy for a pro net player like you.
SH: OK, I admit, I’m…. hooked. Thirty-love to you. What else?
SS: Now even tennis players get old, their joints begin to squeak like a rusty gate and arthritis sets in and ….
SH: OK. OK. I know all about that.
SS: But …. with an extension handle, your tennis racquet becomes a trendy walking stick.
SH: Extension handle?
SS: Sure, it just slips over the racquet grip and then you’ve got a full length walking stick to hobble around with. It’s adjustable too – have a look at it in my online store.
Plus, if you use it when playing tennis, the extra leverage increases the hitting power dramatically and soon you’ll be smashing them back like Djokovic.
SH: That’s not revolutionary – just ridiculous.
SS: Think big Shorten! If everyone kept thinking their teeny weeny thoughts like you, we wouldn’t have any big things, like nuclear bombs big enough to flatten whole cities and wind turbines so large you can see them from space and family sized SUVs that need 3 standard parking spaces.
SH: Or four.
SS: Don’t be absurd. And don’t forget racquets are very good at smashing drones. Those small ones that people send to annoy you and leave advertising leaflets at your front door and collect donations for the drone welfare fund.
Then, you can always re-purpose an elderly tennis racquet as a trellis for growing your tomato plants. Just shove the handle into the soil, plant the tomato seeds around it, water them and there you have it – a crop of tiny tennis tomatoes.
SH: OK. Forty-love to you.
What about creepy creations?
SS: Sure, just print a big photo of your face, that’s creepy, cut it to size for the racquet head, glue it in and fasten it to peer over your office cubicle to remind everyone you are sporty and have a playful sense of humour and a healthy self-belief.
SH: Healthy self-belief? More like monstrous ego.
SS: Really Shorten, you must remember old Heraclitus : “Big results require big ambitions and big egos”. Or was that Napoleon?
In the arena of amusement, tennis racquets can be soaked in petrol and set on fire and used as flaming clubs in juggling displays – which is great entertainment at any tennis tournament. And they are good as a makeshift canoe paddle (with the cover on) while floating down the river.
And don’t forget using your racquet as a guitar.
SH: You mean air guitar don’t you?
SS: No I’m working on making it into the real thing, a short scale electric guitar, complete with magnetic pickups, distortion and a built-in light show.
SH: Help! Let me outta here!
You win, game, set and match!
SS: Then there are the many uses of tennis racquets in fruit and nut harvesting …. and as a giant sieve in food preparation ……. defending yourself from bat attacks ….
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© Geoff Milton 2023
Image inspiration: Bing Image Creator
① “Summertime” – Lyrics by George Gershwin
