The Ball is in your court

A statement made often by my Father, a better than average tennis player, and left handed. He was a man who deeply distrusted those who didn't respond to obligations, and to give and take expectations. The saying seems so old fashioned now-a-days, as does obligation. And this absence throws me off, because I am "my Father's Son in this regard. Very often when I ask someone about something that I've said (or I've heard them hear from someone else) there is simply no response.

I can imagine, almost feel, my Father grabbing my ear, saying "the ball is in your court," and/or giving me the dutch rub. Where are you? Have you forgotten the human duty to respond to conversation, to a request for information? S i l e n c e, I don't think so. Dialog? What is that? With a wicked topspin my Father could sometimes get a tennis ball to hop over your waiting racket, & sometimes it went clear over the fence. He could "lob you to death," too, if he had to.