Balls

Last night W wandered into the living room and asked me what I was drawing.

I said balls.

Looking at my sketch book page, he said what is that, an orange, or a peach or what?

I said, it’s just a ball.

He laughed.

I thought, are balls funny?

These particular balls, not amusing to me no matter how hard I look at them, are simply my experiment in colour blending and shading using pencil crayons.  They ended up looking like unfunny balls.  Mission accomplished.

However, after that, the very idea of balls kept me awake last night.  I imagined teaching everything about balls to people learning the English language. This could be funny for the teacher, but probably much less funny for the students.

Consider this comprehensive list, and then you decide how many ball lessons might be required to master all the concepts.

1.  She entered the ballroom wearing her ball gown to dance at the gala ball.  Everyone could see she was having a ball.

2.  At the ball game in the ball park, the pitcher often throws more strikes than balls.  There are fair balls and foul balls and the umpire must have the balls to stand by his various calls.

3.  What do the words tennis, golf, cannon, meat, ping-pong and basket all have in common?  Bingo.  They are all balls.  There are also bingo balls.

4.  He crumpled the paper into a ball.

5.  A football is not the same thing as the ball of your foot, both of which are larger than the ball of your thumb.

6.  The accountants found his financial records to be all balled up.

7.  Yarn and candy and cotton can all be balls.

8.  If you think something is bull shit nonsense, it’s more polite to call it bolus or balls.

9.  You can carry the ball, run with the ball, drop the ball, start the ball rolling,  keep the ball rolling, and just generally be on the ball.

10.  Does a snowman, made of balls of snow, have snowballs?

It’s enough to make a bald man bawl.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends.  May there be sufficient left overs for turkey balls tomorrow.

And just to remind you that balls can be hilarious, here’s a classic to start off the holiday coming up next.