Fault, by Betsy

I first encountered the word fault meaning a gap or rift in the earth’s crust--not in school or even at home under the tutelage of my parents--but when I was around the age of 50 years partnered with my current spouse and traveling in a geologist’s paradise, the state of Utah. I always thought I had had at least an average education and I did graduate from college. Yet I knew next to nothing about geology. Now whose fault is that?

I have no memory of geology being offered as a subject in high school and not even in college. Granted I attended a liberal arts college for women, and I guess geology was not considered to be of any interest to a 1950’s female student. It’s not that science courses were not offered. Biology101 was a required subject for freshmen. Plenty of courses were offered in chemistry, physics, and other sciences. But no geology or Earth science.

Part of the fault lies in the fact that it was not until the 1940‘s and 50‘s that geologists began to develop a new way of looking at the planet and how it works. Much that we now know about the history of our Earth has been very recently discovered. One of the few positive outcomes of the Second World War was that new technology used for searching for submarines could be developed and further used to study the ocean floor.

As a result scientists could now better understand the dynamics of the earth’s crust. Although the theory of continental drift had been around for decades, now there was an explanation for the movement of the Earth’s land masses which millions of years ago had been one large land mass called Pangea.

This theory of plate tectonics was in the development stage when I was in school. Makes me feel really old. The theory was still in its infancy and not completely developed and certainly not well established among geologists. No wonder it was not well known or understood among educators in 1950.

It seems that today the study of geology has become quite common. Most of my knowledge of the subject that I have now I have learned from my spouse in the last 20 years. Unlike myself, she studied geology in high school and college--and 10 years after I did. I have also gleaned a lot of knowledge from educational television programs about such topics as How the Earth was born, the early history of our planet, volcanoes, and global climate changes, and mass extinctions brought about by catastrophic geologic events. I find geology a fascinating subject, and I love learning new things. Geology does seem to be an excellent topic for educational TV, as the events which have made our earth what it is today are truly dramatic and lend themselves very well to television drama. No wonder. It is the fault of the earth’s faults that causes dramatic events such as tsunamis, earth quakes, volcanic eruptions--big, dramatic happenings.

Enough about the geologic fault. Another kind of fault with which I am quite familiar is the one that happens in tennis when the serve does not clear the net and drop inside the service box. In my ability and age level of tennis, the fault should be a rare happening. What a double fault amounts to is a gift for your opponents. It is a rare happening except when I am playing mixed doubles. In ladies’ senior doubles tennis, in my opinion, the serve is simply the first shot of the game and a way to put the ball in play. The point is rarely won on the serve.

I used to play some mixed doubles. I gave it up when I stopped playing on weekends and when I decided I did not want to routinely lose the game because of my partner serving double faults every time. Why is it that men serve faults so often and women hardly ever? I think it’s because men try to serve aces and women don’t. It’s very hard to serve an ace and it does not happen very often in my age group and ability level. An ace requires a great deal of spin and pace on the ball and perfect placement.

Neither I nor my team mates or our opponents are usually able to pull off such a serve. Better (and more fun) to place it well and play out the point. If I serve a fault, it’s no one’s fault but my own. And everyone knows it.

© 20 April 2015

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading, writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.