Golf. A verb which here defined means enduring an ancient institution, as old and arbitrary as the donning of neckties, to acquire a new business skill. This sounds cold and clinical, I know, and I wish I could tell you I’ve cultivated an authentic passion for the sport, resplendent and self-sustaining, but I can’t fathom achieving such a state until I’m old and gray. I see myself on a futuristic course, replacement hip propped firmly against my trusty magnicite 5-iron with Mk-III dampening field, regaling the grandchildren with tales of how I once “blogged,” via keyboard, about golfing on earth grass.
You’ll have the post beamed directly to your cortex, obviously, so don’t bother marking your calendar.
I’m no longer that guy on the range, the one who continually sends balls skimming across the ground, and I’m not sure whether I should quietly rejoice or throw a small party or what. It’s an advancement that was independently verified by a small boy at the range yesterday, who declared to his father that my first drive sucked, but that the second swing was “pretty good.” This led to an amicable exchange with the patriarch, then an actual handshake, followed by some fatherly advice about how the $120 he spent on a local tutor saved his golf life. Of course, this was all shortly before his boy began to run amok, interrupting shots and pilfering from my bucket, but that’s neither here nor there, and the hate vibes that kids allegedly interpret so skillfully did their duty, limiting the little bastard’s takings to a single ball.
Now, I’ve come to believe that while the game proper can be a genuine social pursuit, the range itself is uncannily similar to a row of urinals, complete with the attendant urinal culture. The main point is to claim your spot and do your business, you know? I’m not here to share my feelings, or babysit your spawn, or swap recipes, or braid your hair or some such shit. When these unspoken rules are violated, what you get in between the chatter are odd silences punctuated by awkward, self-deprecating grunts upon every ill-conceived hook.
The father eventually left, son in tow, but not without reminding me to contact his mentor. A subtle hint, perhaps, but unbeknownst to him I had tied his self-effacing grunts to their corresponding shots and came to a startling realization: the grunts were right, and whereas he had paid $120 to send the ball to Neverland, my hooks were absolutely free. The current plan is to cull golf tips from friends and Youtube, and I have high hopes. What could possibly go wrong from using hearsay and the Internet to learn a sport?
You may suspect, given our odd posting schedule, that I no longer consider myself Caucasian and, in a complete turnaround, now subscribe wholly to the calendar embraced by my Formosan forebears. After all, why else would words appear mysteriously every week at around this time, if only because Tuesdays were truly propitious days for blogging?
But this schedule doesn’t flow from any such calendar, nor is it a hallowed ancestral mandate, so much as a broken resolution. Earlier this year I had committed to writing twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, as a way to maintain mental acuity. Clearly this never held, and all that’s been established is the barest pulse, the threadiest excuse for consistency.
I can certainly feel the effects, let me tell you. If you’ve done lab work, you’ve probably played around with Parafilm, a delightful science-y version of Saran wrap. It feels exactly like that–my brain encased in a generous layer of the stuff–and I’m intent on breaking through the fog. Maybe this week will be different.
A few years ago, the public eye settled on the suburbs, specifically the dissolution thereof, and the market responded in kind, with works like American Beauty, The Truman Show, Pleasantville, and The Corrections dotting our media consciousness. The collective complaint went like this: we’ve got to do something before the the suburban lifestyle consumes our identities and erodes our family values, oh god oh god oh god.
Now, years later, I guess it’s okay to live in the ‘burbs again. Maybe it’s just me, but I actually traded my copy of American Beauty for loose pieces of Tupperware, select Precious Moments dolls, and a lawn gnome. I’m kidding, of course, because every Precious Moments doll is select and, indeed, utterly precious. For me, it’s the creature comforts, the routine, and the stupefying calm that make this lifestyle appealing. Air conditioning? Don’t recall ever existing without one. Trash days? Always Wednesdays, reassuringly enough, and the main source of community grief is whether or not the chick down the street left her garbage can out for an extra day or so.
The real challenge, I think, is ensuring your brain waves aren’t resonating at the exact same frequencies as the suburbs at large. Once in a while, you’ve got to view your day-to-day from a thousand miles high, lest you go soft and turn into a snarling minivan operator. Let me explain. Say you’re at a traffic stop, long line of cars, and the left-turn signal flashes green. First car makes the turn smoothly, followed closely by the second car. But then the third car in line simply idles for heaven knows why, only jolting to life when the blaring horns from behind signal the return of the red light.
How would you react? Calmly? Or perhaps your train of thought goes like this: why isn’t that guy turning? What’s he doing? Phone call? Makeup? Model UN? Turn left, or for fuck’s sake at least briefly consider a left turn. I’m going to be late! Why isn’t he turning? The guy basically owes me whatever gas I’m burning for this extra round of traffic lights–and for changing something so mundane into a razzle-dazzle sensory overload of the highest magnitude.