craigslist is always amazing

i'm playing tennis this weekend against a 74 year old woman with her own court and coach. it was organized by my dad, like every year, and against my will. anyway, the past few years i've lost and it's been embarassing so this year, i wanted some lessons. where else to turn to? craigslist of course. oooh craigslist, with your infinite supply of crazy people - what would we do without CL?
so i met up with "Ron" from precision tennis inc. for our first tennis "lesson" this morning.
he was tall, looked a lot the the statue of David, wore scrubs, and a fanny pack that held one tennis ball, which i presume he stole from his cell mate at the mental hospital. he hit our one ball over the fence on his first swing, and i then had to go into the woods to find more and "learn the true value of the ball." he hacked at every swing sreaming "hiyaaaaah!" like he was a mexican with a machete, or a cowboy on a horse, and would go into this twirling dervish dance when he wasn't swatting at invisible flies. his "serve" was underhand and he swore it was a million miles an hour and would ace Federer. "never saw anything like that, didja! huh?" and then he actually taught me to shit talk against "they" these people who were always after him, ganging up on him....like we were preparing for war. he reminded me a lot of that greek tennis pro Milos, from Seinfeld who totally sucks and asks Jerry to let him win, and then calls him a sissy boy. anyway, he told me to tell 'them' "when to go to bed, and when they're dead." which is golden advice, given the age of this weekend's opponent.
he described three important rules to tennis:
1) timing
2) flow
3) precision flow. which i guess is different from number 2. i was lectured on precision flow for 20 minutes. i still don't know what it is, but i don't have it. there were still a lot of constructive comments like "let it bounce first" or, "whip it more" and "do a little leap after your volley, it will make you feel lighter." the people on the court next to us stopped playing to laugh.
at $15 an hour, it's definitely worth the entertainment. oh, and once i paid (i had to slide the money into his racket cover like it was a drug deal) a cop drove by and he ran full speed into the woods.
Totally. Awesome.