Calories are a girl’s best enemy

I would highly recommend badminton to anyone who wants to lose some weight over the summer. Today I played a game against my cousins and I am happy to report that I lost an impressive amount of calories from running around, brushing the hair away from my eyes, and picking up the birdie. It’s utterly amazing how terrible I can be at that sport! In my opinion, I’d rather not know how to play a sport than be a lousy player. But in this case, I really have no choice because I am in dire need of exercise and badminton is the only sport I can play decently. Yes, decently. So since this is my best, I’d really hate to see my worst.

I didn’t even want to play at first, because I could see that everyone else in the badminton courts were these hardcore badminton players. But since nobody I knew was around, I felt more at ease about making a complete idiot out of myself. I took the freaking plunge.

During my brief stint with the high school glee club, a friend of mine complained about how Tracy, Alys and Kaye always got to sing solos while the rest of us were virtually ignored by the asshole choir master. I replied to her dryly, “Well if we’re going to be the glee club’s ‘back-up singers’, we might as well be damn cute back-up singers!” This afternoon, my motto was, “If I am going to be a lousy badminton player, I might as well be a cute lousy badminton player!” I suppose I might have had some amount of cuteness in my all-blue outfit and my blue and white Nike sneakers. But of course, all that cuteness immediately vanished like wisps of smoke the moment I grabbed my racket and set a sneakered foot on the court.

I love watching people play badminton. Girls in particular. Not because I am a pervy bisexual chick (which I am not :P), but because they look so graceful when they play, as though they are dancing. They would do all these complicated-looking shots with the least about of effort and running around, which impressed me a lot. One of the badminton girls had rebonded hair that she didn’t tie up, and I stared at her enviously as she played. In spite of all the running around that she did, not a single strand of hair in her head went out of place. Whereas my carefully made ponytail was already falling apart fifteen minutes into the game. But I digress.

There really is nothing graceful about me when I play badminton. Today I kept fumbling for the freaking birdie, especially whenever Cristopher would smash it to my side of the court, and I would miss the easiest shots. If you’ve never played badminton in your life, you’d probably think that it is just all about whacking the birdie to the other side of the court. I wish it were just as easy as that. I have a suspicion that Cris only tolerates my lousy playing because he is using me as his badminton dummy. You know, someone that he could practice doing his fancy moves on. Every once in a while I would get lucky and manage a tricky shot or two, which was of course countered by Cris with a shot ten times trickier as the one I just did.

I was tempted many times to throw the racket to the floor and scream, “I QUIT!!!” But for some reason, I kept on playing. I don’t know why. Maybe deep down inside, I’m still hoping that if I keep on practicing I will become a good badminton player someday. Mostly though, I think I played on because I was having fun. Really. It’s fun playing with Cris and Anthony. They never make me feel bad about being such a lousy player. But if they did though, I probably would’ve quit.

My cousins and I stopped by a McDonalds afterwards where we gawked at a girl my sister recognized from long ago, and where I ate a quarter pounder, a LARGE coke, and a sundae cone. So much for all the calories I just lost.