Death by tennis balls? You cannot be serious!

My elderly neighbour was working late in her garage last night.

I got up last night at about 11pm and walked next door to talk to her about it.

She’s a retiree. 

I don’t know her name, so I’ll just call her Beryl.

I said, “Excuse me Beryl, you’re making a racket.” 

She held up a circular metal frame with strings through the middle of it, and a handle at the bottom and said, “I know.” 

I clarified that I was talking about the excessive noise she was making, not the tennis racket she was making. 

I expressed an understanding that tennis as a sport was thriving and that the demand for tennis rackets must be high, to which she said the tennis racket wasn’t being made to play tennis with, but to use as a weapon. 

I asked why. 

She said he had recently taken a job that involved protecting someone from violence, robbery, ransacking, arson and vandalism. 

I asked her what the job was called and she said, “a protection racket.” 

I told her using a tennis racket as a weapon was a bit flimsy, to which she replied that if you hit enough tennis balls at someone, you can kill them. 

Fearing she may hit tennis balls at me, I wished her a good night, walked home and got back into bed. 

The next morning when I went to get my mail, I noticed my teenage neighbour - from the other side of the street - standing at the front of his house. 

I don’t know his name, so I’ll just call him Samuel-Joshua. 

Samuel-Joshua had all these circular welts all over him, the size of tennis balls. 

I feared he had been a victim of Beryl’s protection racket, but he said the marks were from something called cupping therapy. 

I told him how Beryl may have murderous tendencies and that we should all be careful of her willingness to strike tennis balls at people until they were dead. 

Samuel-Joshua laughed and told me I had nothing to worry about. 

“It’s nothing like that,” he said. “She’s restoring her old tennis rackets and giving them to the ‘Salvos’.”