Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Keep your eye on the ball

My idea of playing golf is to watch other people doing it. True, I did play a round at Pirate's Island last week and scored well, but that was just because I wanted to impress my three-year-old grandson. Anyway, for over twenty-four hours my game has been about seeing what happens with a ball I heard land yesterday. It's too far off the course to attract much attention, and close enough to my house to allow me to surveil it. Yep, it's still there. It's a nice new "TIT-lee-ist" with a green Young Life logo. (I learned to say TIT-lee-ist as a captive viewer of a Beavis and Butthead Moronathon. A story for another day.)

After the foursome that I think sent it there passed on by, I was guessing that it wouldn't be long before some tacky unentitled person who didn't hit THAT ball wandered into my "natural area" to retrieve it. This would be par for the course, so to speak. It's not even that long ago that I had a conversation through my bedroom window, where a guy said that he and his daughter were in my yard specifically seeking golf balls. I saw no daughter and called Security, but really people do take a lot of liberties. Oddly enough, when they think they might have hit the house, golfers usually go wheeling on by as though there is no dwelling there. It's only when they've hit a pathetic stroke, no doubt one of many, that they seek their ball as though it were the Hope Diamond. Once in a while, they ask permission, but usually not. And once in a while, in a magnanimous mood, I give found balls to whoever passes unless they act like jerks, in which case I am tempted to say something like, "Nice shot, Alice and you're trespassing."

Since I have hundreds of balls saved up, I don't care about accumulating any more of them, but I am a teensy bit territorial and don't like just any ol' person wandering around my yard. So it's with perverse interest that I keep watch on the occasional ball to see just who is going to irritate me by violating my invisible boundary. It's just a matter of time.

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