Monday, July 18, 2005

Movers Croquet in Rye

Members in attendance: Mycroft, Ace, the Lady Aubergine (going simply as "Egg" for the day), Hot Sauce!, & me - Moxie

We arrived in one car, dressed all in black as planned, with our own croquet mallets. Hot Sauce! gets the award for ballsiest outfit - somewhat reminiscent of 80's German club-wear. The Lady Aubergine tried to foil the plan several times, afraid we were going to actually get involved in some sort of croquet turf war and be exposed for the non-croquet pros we actually are. But we persevered, and she gamely went along.

Several of the men in white, the real croquet players, were instantly happy to see us. We heard things like, "Check out the competition!" and "If they challenge us, say no." Everyone was really impressed and happy to see us, although I don't think anyone noticed our fake skull-and-mallet tattoos. People were taking our picture left and right, some woman took what seemed like an official picture and asked what our club was called. Ace promptly answered, "We're The Movers." She didn't even blink.

We started with a game of 9-wicket on grass, and were promptly exposed as not at all being able to play croquet. We didn't even know the rules at all. I have to say, I loved the tone of the whole day. Here we show up with our own mallets, don't even know how to play, and everyone still takes us really seriously and no one calls us out as the frauds we are (were - now we are croquet masters). Tom was our instructor for the 9-wicket, and we got our money's worth right there. We learned so much about the strategy and skilz, it was awesome.

Everyone kept asking us, "Where does your club play?" Oh, in backyards, we answered. Initially we were trying to be like, "Oh, we play a different style, on a really big court" stuff like that, but we gave that up pretty quick and just focused on learning everything we could.

Then we got a chance at the 6 wicket court, the built in Rhode Island sand one. That was really fun. The wickets are narrow, the mallets huge and heavy, the balls are maybe rubber? Ilsa was our instructor, and much as I love Tom, Ilsa rocked our party world. She kept saying really cute stuff in her thick accent, like, "Send him to the boonies! the boonies!" She also taught us a lot of technical shots, like the split shot, the stop shot - I can't remember any more.

We kept getting invited to play with people - but of course, they play during the day, when all us suckers work. Another moment I didn't witness, but Ace told me about later, was when one of the ladies in white, Marie, was trying to set us up with an instructor for the 6-wicket course and asked this man - didn't hear what he whispered to her, but she apparently responded, "oh no, don't worry, they're very nice." Like he was afraid of us, all dressed in black like that.

Two lowpoints, but not that big a deal: Jim, the owner of the place, convinced Hot Sauce! and the Lady Aubergine to buy a raffle ticket. So they go over, and ask Lorrine(?) to buy one. She looks at them, shakes the basket around a bit, then says, "Nope. We already started." Bitch.
The other thing is that Ace kept giving up our real names! Like he told Tom his real name, then when he gave one of our tattoos to another lady in white, he gave her Mycroft's real name. Not to nitpick, but whose always so concerned about the secrecy?

It was a really fun day, all in all, and we were there for hours and hours. Hot Sauce! and I both were figuring an hour, but we were there for 3 1/2. And it wasn't super crowded or anything. Definitely going to go back next year.

Later we had dinner at the beach palace. And drank some wine. And ate some homemade ice cream.

1 comment:

Sara Zoe Patterson said...

I'm sorry. I hope you are joking because I was. So it was Hot Sauce! this whole time . . .