First and foremost I have to say that the two people Chris
and I watched practice at Indian Wells won the tournament, so I believe we have
some magical powers and we should be hired on to travel around with Rafa and
Maria to ensure future wins. I’m just saying, it could be something to
consider.
Now onto the truth about a tennis tournament and absolutely
baffling people. We were watching Djokovic play and because we had purchased
our day tickets rather late in the scheme of things we were up pretty high. Now
here they do let people come in on the points as it is unlikely to disturb the
players below. There still isn’t a bad seat in the house, but the visual and
audio disturbance created is not like having dude in a pink neon shirt walking
up in your eye line, talking on his cell phone while you are trying to serve
the ball.
These fine individuals start climbing the stairs, being as
loud as humanly possible (I think they might both be hard of hearing) and
pretty much sounding like a conversation you would hear between Jerry
Seinfeld’s parents on the show as they take their seats. After FOREVER they
finally settle down a few seats away from us, great.
Everything is just fine until the woman’s cell phone rings.
Now for those who haven’t been to a tennis match, this is like going to the
movies. They remind you repeatedly to silence your cell phones and you NEVER
answer the phone. Oh, but she did. Now the already hearing impaired woman is
talking on the phone, you know what that means. She is yelling as though she is
somehow projecting her voice clear to the location of the person on the other
end.
Multiple people shoot her dirty looks, I “shush” her no less
than three times and she is oblivious to all of it. She is going through her
laundry list of what she has done over the past two days including who she has
seen. She then starts relaying shot-by-shot the match we are all watching. As
if the Tennis Channel announcers are not bad enough, I am getting the expert
tennis advice from the elderly Jewish lady who doesn’t know how to shut off her
phone as “Djokovic obviously is loosing steam and might very well lose the
match.” He didn’t by the way, won the second set 6-2 and pretty much
eviscerated his opponent, so I am not sure what game she was watching.
Chris had enough and went over there to kindly remind her
that she was not supposed to talk on her phone in the stands and she got off
the phone and apologized. He was thanked by everyone around us and one man even
applauded. Suddenly her husband gets his 80-year-old self all in a tizzy. He
begins loudly complaining about “who is that asshole to tell you what to do. I
should have done something about it, I am going to go over there…” you can
imagine.
That would have probably been the end of it other than the
man continuing to mumble (loudly) under his breath about how rude Chris was;
clearly the world revolves around him. When it was certain who was going to win
the man next to us decided to leave and get something to drink. This man is 20
years older than Chris, wearing a different color and looking nothing like
Chris walks past the couple. Old, senile man has decided in his head that this
is the man who told his wife to shut up.
He begins yelling at him and chasing him down the stairs as
his wife tries to hold him back. He has no idea that he is yelling at the wrong
person nor does his wife. When the man ignores him, he then proceeds to accost
his friend about how rude and horrible that man is and he needs to be taught
some manners. Again, SERIOUSLY?! The 80-year-old, who looks like he might
stroke out at any minute, face as red as a tomato and sweat pouring down,
actually looks like he is going to throw down putting his hands in fists. The
younger man barely contains a smile, shakes his head and starts walking quickly
away. The old man barely makes it back to his seat, I was half expecting him to
roll down the stairs ala Looney Toons.
With that the entire section is laughing as the old peacock
man finally sits back down and we all realize we have missed the end of the
game because the sideshow was just so show stopping. Luckily there were a few
more games in the set, but still. I guess I could look at it that it was nice
the old man was defending his wife’s honor, but when did it become okay to be a
total jackass? Isn’t he supposed to be the one who is annoyed by cell phones
and people who don’t have common courtesy? We are devolving faster than
expected, it is not good, not good at all.
