Tennis Ball Pie

by Joe Davis

   It is a miserable thing to eat a whole tennis ball.  If you have ever tried, I am sure you will agree with me.  The effort of taking the first bite is enough to make your jaws ache and your teeth push themselves painfully back into your gums.  And after that, it only gets worse.  The rubbery flesh of the tennis ball must be chewed for almost an hour before it is pulpy enough to swallow, and with the green fuzz on the outside, the sensation is not unlike chewing dry feathers or cotton wrapped around a piece of old leather.  That is just the first mouthful -- the average tennis ball takes about eight, depending on the size of your mouth.

   Trust me, it is even more unpleasant than it sounds.  And to add insult to injury, though tennis balls are flavorless and bland, they make your breath smell horrible, and they nauseate your stomach.

   So why would I eat twenty-three of them in one sitting?

   Well, its not as if I really had a choice.  You know how hectic the holiday season is these days -- one minute youre shopping for presents, the next, youre eating twenty-three tennis balls with only one glass of water to wash them all down. . . .

   Fred sighed, putting his book down in disgust.  He was fed up with these stories written by Joe Davis.  They lacked structure, they never seemed to have any kind of point, and their endings were always ridiculous (as were the other parts of the stories).  They were also repetitive and redundant.  And the main character never seemed to have any sort of reason for anything he did.

   So Fred decided to go to the lost city of Machu Pichu.  He knew it would not be easy to find, especially since he was illiterate and could not speak any language but Esperanto, but as his talking raccoon Jed always said, Carpe diem or as they say in Esperanto, [insert gibberish].

   One thing Fred did have was an uncanny knowledge of geography.  After countless lonely nights of stargazing and filling notebooks with complicated calculations, he had determined that the planet Earth was a flat square roughly the size and shape of an average napkin.  And from this data, he had deduced that Machu Pichu could not be more than eight-and-a-half inches away from any other spot on earth.  And since his average stride length was more than quadruple that, it would take him less than one step to get there.  All he would have to do is pick the right direction to step.

   Another thing about Joe Davis books, Fred thought, arbitrarily choosing a direction and stepping, is that the main character is always a fool. 

   . . .But if there is no avoiding it, they are best taken with milk.  Aside from adding sogginess and making the tennis balls easier to chew and swallow, the milk also does something to cover up the stench of chemical-breath afterward.  Usually, it will take about a half a cup of milk to make a regulation tennis ball palatable, but drinking so much milk will drastically reduce your appetite, making you even less willing to consume the tennis balls. . . .

   Wilma put down her battered old copy of Daviss On Eating Tennis Balls and got back to her baking.

   Milk, she thought.  I should put some in this time -- it will make the pie better than last years. 

   Last years pie had not been a huge success.  Nobody had gotten any farther than the first bite -- not even Julius Caesar, who was famous for his appetite for power and pie.  And Goofy had not even tried it; he had fed his slice to his dog Pluto.  Wilma was somewhat insulted by the cartoons open disdain for her cooking, but her indignation took a back seat to her curiosity about how one cartoon dog could own another as a pet.  (Goofy had been rather vague on the subject when asked.)

Well, everyone was going to love this years tennis ball pie!  Wilma had been training for this moment for eight months, devouring every book on the subject and traveling around the world to study under foreign piemen.  Before, she had been rash and arrogant, but now, she was ready!

Simple Simon met a pieman

Eating his tennis ball pie. . . .

   . . . But Frosty was the greatest belly-whopper of them all.

   At these words, the widow finally lost her composure and began to sob uncontrollably.  She threw herself on the ground beside the heavy oaken coffin.  Why? she wailed.  Why him?  He was so jolly!

   But the aged parson had no answer; he only droned on with the eulogy.  And Frosty, from his coffin, made no reply. 

   Why? the widow repeated, rending her black veil in anguish.  Why did he have to eat that tennis ball pie?

   . . . But that is just the average man.  An active man (engaging in at least thirty-four hours of cardiovascular exercise per metric day) could eat as many as fifty-seven tennis balls in one sitting.  Of course, this figure could be distorted, as there is always a slight margin of error. . . .

   But here is Haimon, King, the last of all your sons.  Is it grief for Antigone that brings him here, and bitterness at being robbed of his bride?

   I beg your pardon?

   Ummm. . . .  Sophocles adjusted his spectacles, peering over the counter at the tuxedo-clad customer before him.  I mean, would you like fries with that?

   The man considered.  Are they free? he asked.

   No.

   Then. . . . no.  Ill just have my tennis ball burger and medium soda, please.

   Sophocles punched in the numbers on his register.  That will be five dollars even, he said.

   The customer handed over and crisp five-dollar bill.  The Ancient Greek playwright took it, placing it inside his register, then printed out a receipt and tore it off.  The meal was ready presently, and Sophocles put the receipt in the brown paper bag and slid it across the counter to the hungry tuxedo-wearer.

   The man exited stage left, unwrapping his tennis ball burger and taking a bite.

   A new customer stepped up to the counter -- a woman dressed in a bridal gown.

   . . . but, as there has recently been much dispute among the scientific communities, I hesitate to place the tennis ball under any particular food group.

  However, I will say this: the tennis ball is most definitely not a fruit, as it lacks seeds of any kind.  And it is not meat or dairy because it does not come from an animal, nor is it a starch or a sweet because it is green.  I leave the reader to draw his (or her) own conclusion.

THE END