The Badminton Balance

 Every Wednesday, due to my school's policy of forcing some form of exercise on pupils whether they enjoy physically strenuous and largely pointless activities or not (like a slightly less potentially fatal version of conscription), I play badminton. Now, reader's who thought badminton to be entirely an issue of swinging the racket at roughly the right time in the right direction at the right speed and angle, may be surprised to learn that the most important aspect of playing badminton in my case is in fact, balance.
 Badminton is governed by balance: the balance of the weight and leverage of the racket in your hand, the balance of your body as you move across the court and most vitally, the balance between doing too little exercise to be criticized by the teacher and doing too much exercise to unknowingly join the rank of the "Lads" (A collection of muscle obsessed base humans, remarkable living fossil of what I imagine caveman society may have been like). For badminton is a slacker's sport, the last resort, the final safe haven, the one remaining defensive fort, the single hole in the net for those of a non-sporty persuasion and succeeding as a slacker presents its own set of challenges.
 First rule of slacking is that you never talk about slacking. Slack too obviously and you are placed on the teacher's warning list which entails coaching sessions with the teacher present, eyes peeled and glaring (A Hawk-Eye specifically there to judge whether your effort is "IN" or "OUT"), beside you. Hence you must always appear to be keenly playing badminton when the teacher is near. In short, to succeed you must become an agent; feign loyalty to sports but in your heart allow the passionate, though slightly damp and tired, fire of the slacker to burn. However be very cautious of accidentally succumbing to the enemy ideal, start genuinely taking badminton too seriously and the path to becoming a "Lad" opens ( A slippery downward path lubricated with vaseline, sweat and protein shakes).
 Become too good a deceptive agent and gradually what started as a feigned interest in badminton blossoms into genuine love of exercise. What was only a tiresome itch in your muscles becomes pain to be enjoyed. What was a friendly match played merely to humor the teachers in charge becomes a competitive battle to prove your powers as a man are superior to that of your opponent. Soon before you know it you'll be pumping weights in a gym sexually aroused by the very prospect of developing muscles but only capable of a one inch erection due to all the steroids you've taken.
 Therefore the path of the slacker is a hard one, perhaps the hardest. Working enough but ensuring not to work too much. Playing some sports but forever resisting the urge "to go gym" (That is the correct "Lad" term for going to a gym. As Underling Sheep succinctly put it, "There is too much muscular density in that sentence for any prepositions"). We slackers must find the Middle way, we are the Buddhists of exercise preaching the message of love, peace and always having at least ten minutes of sitting down after a minute of any remotely physically strenuous activity.