Tee It Up

I was out for a walk early this morning and happened by a guy messing with his golf clubs in the trunk of his car.  It's a really nice morning, and for just a second or two, I envied him going out and playing golf.  But that passed.

Jan and I both have our own sets of clubs that are hidden somewhere under the stairs in our basement, so that we would have to be pretty determined to get to them, which is just as well.  I played a lot when I was in high school and college, primarily because there was a public golf course just down the street from our home.  It was named "Horton Smith" in honor of some golf dude who I guess was semi-famous for one reason or another, but I had never heard of him. However, if he was good enough to get a whole golf course named after him, I guess he was better than average.

During college, I played almost every day during the summer with my two buddies, and my parents must have thought it was my hobby because they bought me a set of golf clubs for graduation, which I thought was a pretty shitty gift seeing as I already had a set, but I was a self-absorbed snot-nosed kid then and I feel bad now for being so ungrateful during those days, if I allow myself to which isn't often so it all evens out.

I'm not really sure how Jan came by her set of clubs.  I think I bought them for her, but I'm not sure, because if I did, she didn't make a big thing about it and probably thought it on par with getting a vacuum cleaner for her birthday (which even I wasn't dumb enough to do) and I believe the only time she ever used them was the one time we played together.

And the one time we played together was when we lived in our townhouse in Heather Ridge, which had neither heather or ridges, but sounded better than "Dump Trucks Run Continually Up and Down Rt. 120 Waking You Up at Five O'Clock in the Fucking Morning Even on Weekends".  Anyway, this place had a nine hole golf course and one morning, we decided to try it out.

Now I know what you're thinking.  That I'm going to launch into a story about a husband and wife playing golf together and the resulting insults, fisticuffs and divorce proceedings that have been fodder for hilarious print journalism since the dawn of man.  But you would be wrong.  We had a very nice game. I was bad, she was worse.  And we both had fun.

Fun.  That's what a recreational event is supposed to be.  But an awful lot of people don't think that golf is fun.  They think it is supposed to be a passion.  And I don't like playing golf with people who think that the game is a passion.  Much like I don't like going sailing with people who think that particular recreational activity is also supposed to be a passion.  Combine the two passions in one person and you have one fucked up individual.

Since I don't know anyone who doesn't take golf seriously, I haven't played in years.  In fact, the last time I played was when I worked for the foo-foo dust place and was forced to play in their annual golf outing because I was a manager.

Golf outings can be fun if you have the right partner.  At this particular event, I was randomly assigned to one of our vendors that I had never met before.  Luckily for me, this guy didn't take golf seriously either and had been forced to attend by his boss too, so we struck it right off the bat.  We cemented our compatibility by downing 3 Bloody Marys before we even hit the first tee.  Because my company was flush at that time, we were able to afford golf cart rental, which was totally out of sight.  My partner wanted me to drive because his wife told him before he left for the morning that he couldn't drink and drive and she was a member of MADD or something, so he was afraid of her.  I told him she probably didn't mean drive as in "drive golf carts", but he was half in the bag already and I can "hold my likker", so it was just as well that I drove.

And we had a high old time.  We batted the ball around, cheated on our score, managed to locate the green on almost every hole and were adept at finding the "beer girl" on every fairway.  By the end of the game, we were pleasantly blasted and I even managed to win a cool new driver for "most improved score", even though I had not put down my correct number of strokes on any hole that I had played.

Now, that's how you have fun playing golf.  And when I passed that guy this morning, and saw his 400 dollar pair of golf shoes at his feet, I knew he wasn't going to have my kind of fun.

P.S.  For those of you who read my post the other day about my fucking air conditioner, well the sonofabitch won.  I spent all day yesterday herding repairmen around trying to get it fixed on the hottest day of the year so far.  But, by the time the sun went down, we had cool air flowing inside.  So much for my bravado.