All
Throughout the years, every squash player that I have known had a story to tell. This sentiment still applies to this very day. Fellow Jester, Guy Cipriano, has one to recount.
Thanks for sharing, Guy!
John
******
Guy, with his son Peter
After examining me he told me that it had to be surgically removed, but it’s no big deal. He’d cut it out, and then it would heal from the inside out. No stitches - just a packed wound which would grow and the wound would eventually just disappear. So I had the surgery on an outpatient basis, not a big deal. After a week or ten days I went back to the surgeon and he removed the packing and said it was healing nicely and that it was basically all over. He told me not to play squash- just wait until it was healed up. And I followed his instructions and didn’t play for another week or two.
Jim Dawson invited me to play in a doubles tournament at Berwyn outside Philadelphia a week or two later. It was summertime and it would be fun to go down there with my then fiance, eventual wife, and ultimately my ex- wife Deirdre so I said sure and we signed up. Deirdre had an Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Ted who lived in Berwyn; so we would stay with them. Berwyn had two courts, so the play started Saturday morning. Jim and I won, and won again in the afternoon, so we were in the semis Sunday morning. We went to dinner at her Aunt and Uncle’s house which was nearby and they really rolled out the red carpet for dinner.
Sunday morning we had a good match and won so we were in the finals Sunday at 1 pm. I didn’t know our opponents but Jim did . I can’t remember who it was but I do remember that they were a good team and Jimmy wanted to win pretty damned badly. He knew them because he had lived for years in Wilmington and knew most of the good Philly players. There actually was a pretty good gallery watching. We get stuck into this match. I’m on the R , Jim on the L , and I’m 27 years old and running around, hitting hard, and really giving it 100%. After the second game there starts to be a buzz in the crowd and I think that they’re impressed by my play so I torque it up even further. We ended up losing by a few points in the fifth and we shake hands and one of the opponents said “ Hey, you’d better to the locker room and look at that. It must be serious. “
Jim Dawson invited me to play in a doubles tournament at Berwyn outside Philadelphia a week or two later. It was summertime and it would be fun to go down there with my then fiance, eventual wife, and ultimately my ex- wife Deirdre so I said sure and we signed up. Deirdre had an Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Ted who lived in Berwyn; so we would stay with them. Berwyn had two courts, so the play started Saturday morning. Jim and I won, and won again in the afternoon, so we were in the semis Sunday morning. We went to dinner at her Aunt and Uncle’s house which was nearby and they really rolled out the red carpet for dinner.
Sunday morning we had a good match and won so we were in the finals Sunday at 1 pm. I didn’t know our opponents but Jim did . I can’t remember who it was but I do remember that they were a good team and Jimmy wanted to win pretty damned badly. He knew them because he had lived for years in Wilmington and knew most of the good Philly players. There actually was a pretty good gallery watching. We get stuck into this match. I’m on the R , Jim on the L , and I’m 27 years old and running around, hitting hard, and really giving it 100%. After the second game there starts to be a buzz in the crowd and I think that they’re impressed by my play so I torque it up even further. We ended up losing by a few points in the fifth and we shake hands and one of the opponents said “ Hey, you’d better to the locker room and look at that. It must be serious. “
I have no idea what he’s talking about and walk into the locker room. I started to get undressed and I realized that my shorts were totally drenched in blood. The cyst had somehow cracked open because it hadn’t been totally healed and it had been leaking blood slowly into the back of my old school cream colored shorts until they were totally red. I made the executive decision to rinse them out in the shower and put them in the trash.
I didn’t play for a few weeks and then it was all healed up, but there were some stories about the crazy guy from Jersey who was playing and his shorts were drenched in blood. It didn’t hurt, and I never even knew what was happening until I took the shorts off.
That was a L O N G time ago.
Guy
******
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