Now there was constant entertaining, and games all weekend. The only games he knew he had learned at the Willow playground—box hockey, Chinese checkers, and Twenty-one and Horse, games of elimination a few idlers could play around a basketball backboard. In those first years in Middle Falls, as he turned thirty, Owen learned the basics of tennis and golf, of paddle tennis, of skiing, both cross-country and downhill. He learned to swim in water over his head without panicking, and to ride the Berkshires ski lifts calmly even when the chairs bounced a great distance above cliffs of ice and granite. Ice hockey and equestrian sports he willingly forwent, though the men of their new acquaintance had emerged from childhood proficient in the former, and the women the latter. He learned how to play bridge, and up to a point how to dance, though he never felt quite easy with a woman in his arms, having to thrust his feet boldly toward hers. He was rescued from contact dancing by the fashion of the Twist and then the Frug, which suited his loose joints and solitary habits.