yesterday a friend asked

Do you play darts?
No.
No. I shouldn’t play darts. Although, I have.

When my older brother and all of his friends would get drunk in our basement, sometimes they’d play. We’d salvaged our father’s old gold and black board from the garage where it’d been hanging since we were kids. And its smell of general grease, neglect, and gasoline always made me think of being with my dad. The boys hung the board on the dry-wall in the direct pathway to the restroom. It was just about the only surface not made of concrete. Somehow, no one ever got injured by a stray dart. By the time we both moved out, the wall was almost completely destroyed. Sometimes, the boys used to ask me to play. I was never very good at hitting the target.

I developed a theory quite early on in life that I was born with a defect: I am completely devoid of eye-hand coordination. Although I’ve taught myself to be better over the years, there’s no escaping the horror stories of gym class. Or the years I played on the boys’ baseball team, because there wasn’t an equivalent for girls. Desperate attempts to be good. I still panic, a little bit, when I think about performing such tasks in front of other people. Anything involving a ball. A goal. The hardest class for me to pass at university was tennis.