I’ve always had an over-inflated sense of my own height, culminating in a basketball career that extended from about the age of 14 to 28.  Despite being five foot something, I became a reasonable basketball player and even played at representative level due to other sports being far more popular in my home town.

My parents were as supportive as they could be, preferring to drop me off for my four games a week and head home for a rerun of Felix and Oscar. It wasn’t until I attempted to watch other teams playing, some years into my career, that I fully appreciated how excruciating-a-spectator-sport basketball truly is, and forgave my parents for not watching me play.

Those were the days before mobile phones, when you’d let the rotary phone ring twice and then hang up as the signal for Mum or Dad to jump in the Commodore for the pick up. It was also the age of the Zooper Dooper, and no basketball game was complete without at least a couple of these refreshing frozen bags full of cordial at 15 cents a pop.

Anyway, all this nostalgia is not really what this blog post was meant to be about.  Bear with me, I’m getting there….because it was at the age of 15 or 16 when I was playing A-grade basketball that I would sometimes cast my eye over to one of the other courts and behold what appeared to be a bunch of ageing, saggy, 40-something year olds huffing and puffing their way through a game. Snotty kids on the sidelines, playing in the lower grades and perhaps a little dumpy around the middle were just a few of the outstanding features etched into my mind. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I felt horror, but certainly pity was an overwhelming emotion.

Fast forward 25 years. A certain 40-something woman, bit dumpy around the middle and barely able to run a lap hits the basketball court after 15 years in the wilderness.

Now I’m one of them. And I’m loving it.

Sure, my body is taking far too long to get into the position it knows it should be in, and my percentages aren’t what they used to be…but who cares? The competitive spirit, the love of being part of a team and the thrill of a win is all still there. Strong as ever.

Of course, I’ve said a silent sorry to all of those women I pitied all those years ago. Now, as the victim of those looks rather than the perpetrator I feel a certain sense of calm smugness that can only come with knowing that a game of basketball, no matter how good you think you are, isn’t going to change the world. But damn it feels good.