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Julieta López Méndez

Mariana Contreras

Academic Writing

13 Oct. 2021

My Childhood Memory

Playing tennis is genuinely one of my favorite things to do. And no, I don’t practice it as much as

I used to, nevertheless I still love it. I love it because when I play, I get a feeling of euphoria, it’s

exhilarating. The feeling of excitement I get when I play is like no other. I enjoy it so much that when I

was younger my biggest goal was to become a professional tennis player. I dreamt of the day I would be

at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York City playing in the U.S. Open and having the opportunity of

meeting some of my role models like Rafa Nadal or Roger Federer.

Tennis has helped me deal with so much, and I’ve made so many amazing memories while

playing, and one of my favorite memories is playing with my family without question. I started playing

because of them, everyone in my family has played tennis, and I took classes with my cousin, who I used

to do everything with, and had the same goal as me, that’s why we spent so much time on the court as

kids. We both play since we were about 5 years old, and we absolutely loved to play together, especially

because we both are quite competitive. Given that our family loves tennis, my cousin and I would go on

the weekends to play with my uncle, and I loved going. I enjoyed it so much because it’s something I’m

actually very good at.

We went so much on the weekends it kind of became part of the routine of the day. I still

remember how my Saturdays were: I would wake up, have breakfast, go play tennis for about three hours,

and then maybe even go for a swim. Now that I’m looking back at what I used to do on the weekend, I

miss it so much, I feel like everything, obviously, was much simpler and easier when I was younger. Now
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I sometimes spend my time of the weekend doing homework and turning in all these assignments, and I

haven’t been on the tennis court for two long years, it’s torture.

My days of playing with my family I think are practically over. Due to some reasons I’m not

going to get into, my cousin and I have distanced in the last couple of years. We have talked but not that

much, and I haven’t seen him in a while, much less play tennis with him. I don’t even know when or how

suddenly everything changed, and it all stopped, it’s been quite a while since I last went to play tennis on

a Saturday. I guess I started growing up and started to focus on other things. Of course, school started to

get more difficult, I started to have less free time, and although I still wanted to play, a lot of things got in

the way.

Now that I think about it, obviously, a lot has happened since I was last on the court, and I feel

like playing right now would help me so much. I miss going to my classes almost every day, and that

feeling I got when I hit the ball with my racket. In my opinion, I think when I play, I let go of so much

stress, or anger and, honestly, that would help me a lot right now.

I want to find someone who will go and play with me, since my search until now has been a

complete and utter waste of my time. I’ve asked several family members, or even they have offered, but

my mom, well let’s be honest she hasn’t played in a long time, and my two sisters both have far more

interesting things to do on a Saturday. I guess I do too but going once every other week to relieve stress

wouldn’t hurt. Specially because tennis is one of the few things that I’m pretty great at, I actually enjoy,

and as I said before, the feeling of being on the court with my face melting because of the sun and my feet

hurting terribly was just like no other, I want it back.