At Least I Went to Church This Morning

Do you play golf? Ok, good. If you’re somewhat toying with the idea of possibly considering heading out to your neighborhood course, DON’T. As a former award-winning athlete (defensive MVP of the travel softball “World Series” when I was 10, thank you very much), I am basically an authority on what activities can be considered legitimate sports and which ones are deviously large scale practical jokes. Golf is not a sport. Golf is the total unraveling of my Christian nature. Golf elicits more profanities from my mouth than the cancelling of Gilmore Girls. Golf makes me want to inflict massive amounts of destruction on other people’s property…and that’s not even referring to the stray drives that slice through the modular home windows lining the golf course. Golf makes me want to intentionally rip things to shreds and break large substantial things into millions of tiny shards. Golf turns me into a very not nice girl.

I would like to take this moment, now that the golf cart is safely parked and my head is sufficiently cleared of all psychotic tendencies, to apologize to a few people.

Leah, I’m sorry that I beat your new driver into that divet I made. Repeatedly.

Clayton, I’m sorry about all those curse words. I know it makes your ears bleed, and I promise I’ll hold a bag of frozen peas to the side of your head to reduce the swelling from that barrage of unmentionable adjectives during the back nine.

Mark, I’m sorry all I could offer you was a pouty smile when you had the best game of your life. Sometimes I have a hard time letting other people be good at something when I’m humiliatingly awful.

To the good people of Odessa, I am sincerely sorry for making you wait 45 minutes on that par 5. Who knew hitting 30 yards at a time could take that long?

To the golf pros pointing and laughing from the club house, I’m sorry for sullying the reputation of your golf course.

To my father and brother, I’m sorry for taking up space in your golf gene pool. I don’t belong there, and I know it.

To Bryson, I’m sorry I left you in your crate for 5 hours and came home with absolutely nothing to show for it, including my dignity. Five hours of scraping poop off blades of grass with a plastic bag while you’re desperately pulling the leash towards the spot another dog peed on six years ago would have been more fun. And I mean that with all my heart.

I don’t like golf. No one who plays golf likes it. But somehow this “sport” transforms from a fun way to spend an afternoon to an other-worldly, deeply personal, moral battle with yourself. And when the stakes are that high, Failure is not an option. Conveniently, you are also willing to spend unreasonable amounts of money on balls and tees and clubs and gloves and, if I’m ever going to agree to go again, lessons to avoid this moral failing. And that price ticket can run pretty steep. Good thing the federal government is footing the bill for Clayton’s tuition AND my uncontrollable use of obscenities.