Before last November, I was just another New Yorker who was too lazy to master the Parks Department’s outdoor-permit system, and too cheap to rent out court time at an indoor club. Tennis was a vacation delicacy, like snorkeling or room service.

It was on one of those vacations, to the Caneel Bay Resort in St. John, that I showed up at the local tennis courts intending to take a clinic, a.k.a. a group lesson. Waiting under the cabana, I met Roberta, a sixty-something woman from northern New Jersey whose daughter, I learned, was getting married that weekend. By the time “Congratulations!” flew out of my mouth, Roberta had made the tragic error of inviting me to join her doubles match, and I’d made the tragic error of accepting.

I knew I was in trouble when Roberta asked me which side I wanted to cover, and I politely shrugged: “You decide.” She didn’t seem to like that. “WHICH SIDE DO YOU WANT?” “O.K., I’ll take here?” I said. “Oh. You mean forehand,” said Roberta, oozing with contempt. So I was a little rusty on the lingo. Surely my partner could spare some patience for a self-deprecating stranger whose last real doubles match was back in high school?

But my faux pas piled up: complimenting an opponent’s ace, apologizing for missed shots. I could feel Roberta’s animosity radiating off her sun visor. This did not help my game. An hour later, I left the court in disgrace, hating Roberta and her friends—but especially Roberta—for being so cutthroat about a stupid sport. Who behaves that way? Nobody I was close to, that’s for sure.

Then it hit me: Tennis People are mean. They were raised to be that way by their mean, tennis-obsessed parents, who wear crisp tennis outfits, belong to country clubs and force their kids to take lessons from the time they can walk. So firm is their belief that tennis is an essential life skill that, no matter how floppy or uncoordinated their child inevitably feels at first, he or she is simply not allowed to quit. Quitters are losers.

I’m sure I quit tennis lessons at some point in my childhood, and I’m sure there were no repercussions. In fact, my parents couldn’t care less about any sport or game. In our family, winning wasn’t any cooler than losing, and being called “competitive” was a downright insult. Niceness, decency, consideration for others—these were the medals we wanted to win.

After my run-in with Roberta, I should have never wanted to play tennis again. But the opposite happened: I came back to Brooklyn hoping, needing to become a better tennis player. I signed up for weekly clinics at my gym, which led to play dates with a rotating crew of people at my level. These people are not my friends. The six of us barely know each other and don’t socialize outside the bubble of the tennis court, but we’re bonded in the knowledge that we’ll drop almost anything for the chance to play.

What’s worse, I’ve turned into one of those people who actually care about winning, which makes me queasy. I remember learning about sportsmanship back in grade school: Kids who threw tantrums when their team lost were “sore losers,” and kids who gloated after winning were “sore winners.” I found both extremes unattractive and vowed to stay comfortably in the middle. I tried my best not to try my best; that way, I could walk away feeling not too bad about myself, and not too good. That’s what I thought it meant to be a good sport and, more importantly, a nice person.

These days, I’m out for blood, and it makes me sick. Every time I call an opponent’s shot “OUT!” or “WIDE!” or scream “MINE!” at my doubles partner, I feel a little bit of my humanity slip away. And that doesn’t even begin to describe the glee I tamp down when my opponent thwacks the ball into the net. I feign indifference, but on the inside I’m shouting, “Free point!” I’m a monster.

The more I play, the more certain I am that tennis is the devil’s pastime. Two of my favorite movies of last year were Match Point and The Squid and the Whale, and they don’t exactly challenge the notion. One is about a career tennis player who ruthlessly kills his mistress, and the other is about a cerebral couple with serious rage issues who just happen to love tennis.

I’m starting to think that all tennis players fall roughly into one of these categories: scrappy, late-in-life players who are “nice” but secretly wish they could smack people; and lifelong players who have no qualms about smacking people, because compassion simply was not part of their training.

Sometimes I daydream about the kind of person I’d be if I had been raised by Tennis Parents. Would I have buckled under their pressure to be The Best? Would I have different friends, a different figure, and be in an entirely different field? Maybe I’d be a total bitch. On the other hand, imagine the serve I’d have! And would it be so terrible to be able to walk into a competitive situation, play my best game, and never feel even a hint of empathy for the other side? I guess I’ll never know.

In the meantime, I’m determined to master the impossible game of playing to win without becoming Roberta. Some days, it’s easy. Other days, I scare myself.

Last weekend, I went to Florida for a friend’s wedding and signed up for a clinic at the hotel. Minutes into the class, I became cranky and frustrated: The instructor was overly instructive, there were too many players, and every time I hit the ball, this guy in the group would shout out “Nice shot!” or “Good one, babe!” I wanted to tell him to cool it with the compliments, it was really inappropriate, not to mention distracting. But then I’d remember: He was my husband, and he was just being nice.

It’s not that I don’t love my nieces and nephews. It’s just that every visit with the little cherubs provides more evidence that I am a sucky aunt.

Take, for example, a recent trip to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on Broadway with my 8-year-old niece, Haley.

For those unfamiliar with the production, it features a chilling character called “The Child Catcher,” who rounds up children and stores them in a cage underground. To ensure maximum creepiness, he has a falsetto voice and reappears throughout the show, calling out: “Child-rennnnn …. Oh, child-rennnnn … !”

Haley had an age-appropriate response to this character: terror. Not paralyzing or hysterical, just the kind that causes an 8-year-old to ask her aunt on the way to the ladies’ room: “Are there really kidnappers in the world?” To which her aunt replied: “Mm-hm!” Real chipper, as if the question had been: “Can we have ice-cream sundaes later?”

In that moment, I was trying to establish myself as a macho, no-nonsense aunt, the kind who takes a drag of her proverbial cigarette and dishes out the cold, hard facts: The world is a tough place, kiddo, I ain’t gonna lie. How pathetic. Why not be the kind of aunt who makes her niece feel better after a scary Broadway show?

At bedtime, I went into my guest room and kneeled down next to her on the air mattress. “Haley, I want to make sure you know that the scary man from the show isn’t real,” I said, looking into her eyes, trying to make my voice sound all cozy and hot-chocolate-y. “You’re safe here, and no kidnappers are going to get you. Do you feel safe?”

“Well, I did until you reminded me,” she said with a sigh. “Will you get my dad?”

Then there was the time my 7-year-old niece Megan asked me, in front of my whole family, if my boyfriend and I “see each other naked.”

There was a moment of squirmy silence.

“That’s a very grown-up question,” I said, practically in a British accent. Megan said she was sorry and shuffled off. And that was that. I could’ve asked her why she wanted to know. We could’ve had an interesting conversation. We both could’ve learned something. But nooo, I had to get Victorian on her ass.

Being such a sucky aunt wouldn’t bum me out so much if I hadn’t expected to be the Best Aunt Who Ever Lived. I had everything going for me:

a) My youth: I was a spry 25 when I first entered the field.

b) My experience: I had done, like, a ton of babysitting in my teens.

c) My station in life: I didn’t have a distracting husband, nor pesky kids of my own.

d) My New York City location. My nieces and nephews would be restless suburbanites thirsting for adventure. I envisioned countless eye-opening visits: rides on the subway, trips to the Central Park Zoo, the American Museum of Natural History and Serendipity.

But the title “Aunt Elisa” wasn’t cutting it. She had no pizzazz, no zing! So I came up with the snappier, kickier “Auntie Lis” (pronounced Leese). I didn’t think of it as marketing at the time, but that’s exactly what it was: a cheap branding technique to convince my siblings’ offspring that I was F-U-N. Auntie Lis had worked at Nickelodeon Magazine! She still ate chicken fingers and cotton candy!

In my fantasy, the character of Auntie Lis would grow and mature in perfect tandem with her nieces and nephews. By the time the kids were teens, they’d trust their favorite aunt so much that they’d turn to her when they had trouble with their friends, or trouble with the opposite sex—or trouble with the same sex, if they turned out to be gay! That’s how understanding and “down” she’d be.

I even imagined a day when one of my nieces or nephews would need to break free from the stifling confines of suburbia; that’s when they’d come live with their Auntie Lis, if only for a little while.

Alas, things haven’t turned out as I expected.

First I blamed the kids for being too young or too sheltered to appreciate what they had in me. I’d look forward to every visit, expecting to be attacked by a throng of hugging, giggling rug rats, only to find that the kids needed to be coaxed by their parents to break away from the TV to say “hello” to Auntie Lis. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

They also weren’t supposed to have busier lives than I do. My 11-year-old nephew, Gabe, is on a high-powered soccer team that travels up and down the East Coast for tournaments. So on the rare occasion that I actually see him, I have a knee-jerk tendency to blurt out lame things like: “Look how big you’ve gotten!” I might as well be pinching his cheeks, reeking of mothballs, and giving him hard candy from the bottom of my purse.

I also blamed New York for not delivering on the “cool” front. After hosting many kvetchy visits here, I decided that the city was just too big and, literally, too pedestrian for kids—especially suburban ones with their tiny, underutilized legs. Showing them a good time here felt almost cruel. Apparently, for the minivan-to-school-to-gymnastics-to-Hebrew-school set, a three-block walk to the subway feels like the Bataan Death March.

But then one day I had an epiphany—or, more specifically, a fight with my 3-year-old nephew, Ethan. It was the day before his fourth birthday, and we were on the phone, fishing around for things to talk about.

I asked if he was excited about his birthday party.

“No, because it’s not today.”

“Yes, but when you wake up tomorrow morning, the party will be about to start, so it’s O.K. to be excited now.”

“But my party isn’t in the morning, it’s in the afternoon.”

Jesus, what did this kid have against excitement? “But it’s still the same day, just a few hours later …. ” “YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!” Ethan suddenly screamed. My sister grabbed the phone away from him and asked me what on earth I’d said to provoke him, and we had a good laugh.

But later I wondered: Why was I so invested in his excitement, anyway? Suddenly, all my years of aunt angst clicked into place. In my attempt to be the World’s Best Aunt, I’d become the World’s Neediest One. Making matters worse, I wasn’t exactly clear on who this Auntie Lis character was, so I’d probably confused the hell out of the kids. With Haley’s fear of kidnapping, I was Rizzo from Grease. With Megan’s question about nudity, I became Mother Superior; with Ethan’s birthday, Tony Robbins.

It all makes me wonder if I should’ve gone with “Aunt Elisa” or, better yet, dispensed with the “Aunt” altogether. Staying just plain “Elisa” might have helped me to do that thing we always tell kids: be yourself.

It’s not that I don’t love my nieces and nephews. It’s just that every visit with the little cherubs provides more evidence that I am a sucky aunt.

Take, for example, a recent trip to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on Broadway with my 8-year-old niece, Haley.

For those unfamiliar with the production, it features a chilling character called “The Child Catcher,” who rounds up children and stores them in a cage underground. To ensure maximum creepiness, he has a falsetto voice and reappears throughout the show, calling out: “Child-rennnnn …. Oh, child-rennnnn … !”

Haley had an age-appropriate response to this character: terror. Not paralyzing or hysterical, just the kind that causes an 8-year-old to ask her aunt on the way to the ladies’ room: “Are there really kidnappers in the world?” To which her aunt replied: “Mm-hm!” Real chipper, as if the question had been: “Can we have ice-cream sundaes later?”

In that moment, I was trying to establish myself as a macho, no-nonsense aunt, the kind who takes a drag of her proverbial cigarette and dishes out the cold, hard facts: The world is a tough place, kiddo, I ain’t gonna lie. How pathetic. Why not be the kind of aunt who makes her niece feel better after a scary Broadway show?

At bedtime, I went into my guest room and kneeled down next to her on the air mattress. “Haley, I want to make sure you know that the scary man from the show isn’t real,” I said, looking into her eyes, trying to make my voice sound all cozy and hot-chocolate-y. “You’re safe here, and no kidnappers are going to get you. Do you feel safe?”

“Well, I did until you reminded me,” she said with a sigh. “Will you get my dad?”

Then there was the time my 7-year-old niece Megan asked me, in front of my whole family, if my boyfriend and I “see each other naked.”

There was a moment of squirmy silence.

“That’s a very grown-up question,” I said, practically in a British accent. Megan said she was sorry and shuffled off. And that was that. I could’ve asked her why she wanted to know. We could’ve had an interesting conversation. We both could’ve learned something. But nooo, I had to get Victorian on her ass.

Being such a sucky aunt wouldn’t bum me out so much if I hadn’t expected to be the Best Aunt Who Ever Lived. I had everything going for me:

a) My youth: I was a spry 25 when I first entered the field.

b) My experience: I had done, like, a ton of babysitting in my teens.

c) My station in life: I didn’t have a distracting husband, nor pesky kids of my own.

d) My New York City location. My nieces and nephews would be restless suburbanites thirsting for adventure. I envisioned countless eye-opening visits: rides on the subway, trips to the Central Park Zoo, the American Museum of Natural History and Serendipity.

But the title “Aunt Elisa” wasn’t cutting it. She had no pizzazz, no zing! So I came up with the snappier, kickier “Auntie Lis” (pronounced Leese). I didn’t think of it as marketing at the time, but that’s exactly what it was: a cheap branding technique to convince my siblings’ offspring that I was F-U-N. Auntie Lis had worked at Nickelodeon Magazine! She still ate chicken fingers and cotton candy!

In my fantasy, the character of Auntie Lis would grow and mature in perfect tandem with her nieces and nephews. By the time the kids were teens, they’d trust their favorite aunt so much that they’d turn to her when they had trouble with their friends, or trouble with the opposite sex—or trouble with the same sex, if they turned out to be gay! That’s how understanding and “down” she’d be.

I even imagined a day when one of my nieces or nephews would need to break free from the stifling confines of suburbia; that’s when they’d come live with their Auntie Lis, if only for a little while.

Alas, things haven’t turned out as I expected.

First I blamed the kids for being too young or too sheltered to appreciate what they had in me. I’d look forward to every visit, expecting to be attacked by a throng of hugging, giggling rug rats, only to find that the kids needed to be coaxed by their parents to break away from the TV to say “hello” to Auntie Lis. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

They also weren’t supposed to have busier lives than I do. My 11-year-old nephew, Gabe, is on a high-powered soccer team that travels up and down the East Coast for tournaments. So on the rare occasion that I actually see him, I have a knee-jerk tendency to blurt out lame things like: “Look how big you’ve gotten!” I might as well be pinching his cheeks, reeking of mothballs, and giving him hard candy from the bottom of my purse.

I also blamed New York for not delivering on the “cool” front. After hosting many kvetchy visits here, I decided that the city was just too big and, literally, too pedestrian for kids—especially suburban ones with their tiny, underutilized legs. Showing them a good time here felt almost cruel. Apparently, for the minivan-to-school-to-gymnastics-to-Hebrew-school set, a three-block walk to the subway feels like the Bataan Death March.

But then one day I had an epiphany—or, more specifically, a fight with my 3-year-old nephew, Ethan. It was the day before his fourth birthday, and we were on the phone, fishing around for things to talk about.

I asked if he was excited about his birthday party.

“No, because it’s not today.”

“Yes, but when you wake up tomorrow morning, the party will be about to start, so it’s O.K. to be excited now.”

“But my party isn’t in the morning, it’s in the afternoon.”

Jesus, what did this kid have against excitement? “But it’s still the same day, just a few hours later …. ” “YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!” Ethan suddenly screamed. My sister grabbed the phone away from him and asked me what on earth I’d said to provoke him, and we had a good laugh.

But later I wondered: Why was I so invested in his excitement, anyway? Suddenly, all my years of aunt angst clicked into place. In my attempt to be the World’s Best Aunt, I’d become the World’s Neediest One. Making matters worse, I wasn’t exactly clear on who this Auntie Lis character was, so I’d probably confused the hell out of the kids. With Haley’s fear of kidnapping, I was Rizzo from Grease. With Megan’s question about nudity, I became Mother Superior; with Ethan’s birthday, Tony Robbins.

It all makes me wonder if I should’ve gone with “Aunt Elisa” or, better yet, dispensed with the “Aunt” altogether. Staying just plain “Elisa” might have helped me to do that thing we always tell kids: be yourself.