Mason and the Stolen Tennis Racket

If you haven’t figured it out by now, my nephew Mason is awesome. Awhile back my sister and her husband were playing tennis at the Collins Hill Athletic Club in Lawrenceville, Georgia; where they both play for some sort of tennis team and in fact, my brother-in-law is pretty damned good (he is the most non-athletic looking insanely talented athlete I have ever met). Last year, his team won the ALTA City Championship and I can only assume that that is pretty good considering he plays in Atlanta. Anyways, they were playing tennis at this athletic club when Mason said he had to go to the bathroom and wandered off. A couple minutes later, he came back with a random tennis racket. My brother-in-law just assumed he had swiped it from someone else’s bag, which he is known to do from time to time (one time during a match, he broke into someone’s car and stole chewing gum out of their middle console). After no one claimed the racket, my sister ended up leaving the racket on the court, hoping the owner would come looking for it. A couple days later, the tennis pro at the club called my sister and informed her that they had security footage of Mason stealing said racket from their shop. That’s right, Mason was not even three years old at the time but he had already been caught on tape shoplifting a $200 tennis racket. My sister told the tennis pro where they left the racket, but it was missing and so my sister was now out 200 bucks. Luckily, someone on her team picked it up thinking it was another teammate’s racket and they returned it with no hard feelings, but that doesn’t erase the fact that Mason would have a record if he were old enough. Once again, I will mention that my middle name is Mason and that I warned my sister that nothing good could come out of naming her kid after me and sure enough, I was right, but in an awesome way.

"That's Mason standing on top of a truck.  Two things about this photo, first, Mason wasn't even two years old and he got up there by himself.  Second, my sister saw him up there, went inside to get a camera, took the picture, THEN helped him down.  That's her favorite part of the story."