It's Just like Chicken Pox

"How's the leg?" is the question from caring friends and family members (and acquaintances who are co-passengers in elevators--you know how awkward those rides can be). 
My answer varies from "Good," to "Getting better," to "Not bad."  Why the variation?  Because I am in a kind of awkward time where I am not yet healed but definitely not struggling down stairs or carefully negotiating street curbs as before.  Brittney Spears could write (lipsynch) a great song about me.
My running has reached an apex of 20 minutes and has hovered around the 17-20 minute mark for two weeks now.  The plan is to ramp it up to 22, 25 minutes in the next week.  I might even run a 5K in five days.
Then What?
My physical therapist, who I haven't seen in two-plus months, even gave me the thumbs-up to do sprints, tennis, basketball when you feel like it.
Do feel like it?  YEAH.  Yeah.  Yeah, I think. 
With the Master Plan being a full return to fairly-frequent (yes, purposely vague) tennis and basketball-playing, I wonder about the next, ahem, step.
Jump rope?  It'll be a pretty soft landing.
Tennis rallying while jogging to balls?  I'll need a patient partner.
Shooting around?  Can someone shag for me like I'm Jesus Shuttlesworth and his impeccable elbow-positioning before a game?
Half-speed game until I find a groove?  In the words of Tom Jackson: "C'mon, man!"
Who ever heard of half-speed games? 
As for the voice in my head that has been planted by my friend who insists that I hang up the basketball shoes lest I suffer another dehabiliting injury...
I tell myself, and anyone who deigns to ask, that my injury was like chicken pox.  C'mon, man, they only happen once.
Famous last words?