Learning Golf

Recently Priscilla said to me, Doug, it is about time you learned to play golf, you know, that's the game where you chase a ball all over the country when you are too old to chase women.

So I asked her if she would teach me how to play.

She said, "sure, you've got balls, haven't you?"

I said "yes, but sometimes on cold mornings they're kind of hard to find."

"Bring them to the clubhouse tomorrow", he said, and we will tee off.

"What's tee off", I asked?

She said "it's a golf term and we have to tee off in front of the clubhouse."

"Not for me," I said, "you can tee off there if you want to, but I'll tee off behind the barn, somewhere."

"No, no," she said, "a tee is a little thing about the size of your little finger."

"Yeah, I've got one of those."

"Well," she said, "you stick it in the ground and put your ball on top of it."

I asked, "do you play golf sitting down? I always thought you stood up and walked around."

"You do," she said, "you're standing up when you put your ball on the tee."

Well, I thought that was stretching things a little too far.

She said, "You've got a bag, haven't you?"

"Sure," I said.

She said, "your balls are in it, aren't they?"

"Of course,: I told her.

"Well," she said, "can't you open the bag and take one out?"

I said "I suppose I could, but damned if I was going to."

She asked if I didn't have a zipper on my bag, but I told her "no, I'm the old fashioned type."

Then she asked me if I knew how to hold my club. Well, after seventy+ years I should have some sort of an idea. She said, "you take your club in both hands..."

Well, I knew right then she didn't know what she was talking about.

"...Then he said you swing it over your shoulder."

"No, no, that's not me, that's my brother Harry you're thinking about."

She asked me, "how do you hold your club?" and before I thought, I said, "in two fingers."

She said that wasn't right and got behind me and put both arms around me and told me to bend over and he would show me how.

She couldn't catch me there, because I didn't put four years in the Navy for nothing.

She said, "you hit the ball with your club and it will soar and soar."

I said "I could well imagine."

Then she said, "And when you're on the green..."

"What's the green?" I asked.

"That's where the hole is" she said.

"Sure you're not color blind?" I asked.

"No, then you take your putter..."

"What's the putter?" I asked.

"That's the smallest club made" she said.

"That's what I've got, a putter."

"And with it," she said, "you put your ball in the hole."

I corrected, "you mean the putter?"

She said "the ball, the hole isn't bit enough for the ball and the putter."

Well, I've seen holes big enough for a horse and wagon. Then she said, "after you make the first hole, you go on to the next seventeen."

She wasn't talking to me. "After two holes I'm shot to hell."

"You mean," she said, "you can't make eighteen holes in one day?"

"Hell no, it takes me eighteen days to make one hole, and besides, how do I know when I'm in the eighteenth hole?

She said "the flag would go up..."

That would be just my luck.