Emily Heller

Thanks to the new Facebook feature where, when someone messages you, it shows you every message you’ve ever sent them, I end up skipping down memory lane a lot. Just kidding. It barely ever happens. HOWEVER, today I did happen to find this conversation from… oh, five years ago, between me and my friend Donny. At the time, he was a competitive college tennis player whose career as a student was about to end. He had one tournament left. for which there would be a number of spectators. Apparently, I was trying to get him to do some fun TENNIS PRANKS during his last game and I sent him some ideas:

EMILY: ok, one round you should yell “fore” after every time you hit it. like golf.

another round you should say “yes” after each time.

another round you should just shout random words every time. examples/suggestions: “tomato. potato. pepper. popper. pickle. tingle. rascal. thing. thong. cisco.” word association.

ok that’s all i got. what do you think.

His response:

DONNY: I think these are very funny ideas. If I yelled “fore” everytime after i hit a ball, that means I would yell “fore” at least a thousand times throughout one match. If I said tomato, potato, pepper or pickle, the coach would have a talk with me after the match, and suggest counseling. He’d think my mind is not on the match, but on a grocery list. 

I also want to scotchtape a couple of batteries to my arm. Eventually my opponent will notice batteries taped to my body, because when I am losing, I’ll change the batteries, look him in the eye and say “just charging up”.

I also want spurs on the back of my tennis shoes. A flask to drink my water from. And put speakers in my tennis racquet, so every time I hit the ball, the sound of a shotgun is heard.

And my final response:

EMILY: ok i was with you until the speaker thing and now i think that you are just not considering any of these as plausible. that is disappointing to me, donny. you don’t have to be strict about the fores… you could just do it ten times in a row and that would be enough. and i don’t think it would be thousands.

what do you really want to yell, donny? what’s inside of you?

HE NEVER DID ANY OF THEM!!!!