I get it. Pickleball ruined your neighborhood. Tennis courts are completely booked, people you once called friends now go “dinking,” and that incessant popping sound from a plastic ball echoes off suburban walls like circling birds of prey waiting to close in on your sanity. But look, pal, you’ve got it easy. You think pickleball is bad? Try living next to an eighteenth-century warship.
It was like it happened overnight. One day, we’re all living in a regular neighborhood, participating in usual landlocked recreational hobbies, and then, boom—a massive wooden barge is anchored outside our cul-de-sac. Now, all anyone wants to do on the weekends is sail the high seas and join a press gang. Can’t we just stick to charcuterie and Bunco?
I’m not one to typically tell people what they can or can’t do. You want to man the oars during doldrums while chanting along to rhythmic sea shanties? Be my guest. But when your newfound nautical interest resuscitates a modern scurvy epidemic, now we’ve got a problem—a vitamin-deficient, gums-bleeding-out problem.
