Tennis fiend.

When I was a mere slip of a lass, I never in my whole entire life thought I would learn to love so many different sports so much. Back in those days, I thought sports were for unintellectual types unlike myself. However, I learned to love basketball when I was at BYU, and they had good teams upon good teams, culminating in the Danny Ainge years, which were very good years indeed.

I learned to love soccer because my kids' dad played soccer in high school, and all our kids played. It is perhaps the best game of all.

And I learned to love to watch tennis because the historian loves it. I have watched a lot of tennis on television in the last several years. At the moment we are watching the semifinals of the Australian Open, and it has literally been killing me to watch Federer hit balls into the net on his tired-looking returns, even though I would feel sad if Andy Murray lost. Also, I will feel sad if Federer loses.

The historian: Well, that's it. Murray's going to win this set, and then he's going to go on to win the match. He's just playing better.

Me: He looks confident, doesn't he.

The historian: He sure does.

Me: [mulling over my vast trove of tennis legend and lore] I don't know--we've seen Federer come back in situations just like this.

The historian: ....

Me: Well, haven't we?

[Federer wins the tie-break to win the set.]

The historian: You called it.

Me: [gloating like a gloater. I wish I could say I kept it to myself. But:] I did, didn't I?

[NOTE: this was all, of course, before I realized how the match actually turned out.]