The golf course is a great place for conversations and the first weeks of March is a great time to consider a couple from last year.
I remember one chat with friends about getting tattoos. The guy I was talking to wanted to get ink telling the world his lowest golf score he’d ever shot for 18 holes. “That’s assuming you’re never going to go lower than that score, isn’t it?” I warned. As far as I know, he’s never gotten the tat.
Another conversation, deeper than the tattoo topic, revolved around prime numbers. Last year was a big year in the life cycle of the 17-year locust and being outdoors, listening to the drone of a nearby cicada, we talked about these bugs vis a vis their relationship with math. Scientifically, my friend Roger explained to me between golf swings and waiting on tee boxes, that locusts have evolved to emerge in these specific years for good reason. Thirteen and 17 are prime numbers; indivisible by any other number. Evolving this way, they have been able to avoid certain predators that also only appear only in given years.
His conviction about the theory was way stronger than my tattoo friend.
A third conversation involved golf shoes, or necessary lack thereof. One day last summer I showed up at the course without my usual golf shoes. Not wanting to buy a pair in the pro shop, I decided to play in the sneakers I’d driven there in. Half way through the round one of my playing partners noticed that I was playing in street shoes and asked how it was going.
“You know, I think I’ve made a discovery today. I don’t think I swing hard enough anymore to cause my feet to slip.”
I’ve never been what anyone would call a long hitter, but I’ve always been longer than average. Now in my late 60s, the effects of age, time, and a lifetime of sitting too often are showing their results. While I still swing as hard as I can, the results of those swings are far less physical and staying put can be accomplished without spiked shoes anchoring my feet.
Today, as I look out the window at a still-frozen and snow-covered landscape, I further parse those conversations.
I’ve considered tattoos off and on throughout my adult life. I’ve never settled on one yet. Not like my golfing buddy that still thinks he’s going to get better at golf, but just because I can’t commit to anything that changes my appearance permanently.
The cicadas, like most other bugs, even the ones that come out every year, are sound asleep or waiting to hatch in another couple of months. How I envy them for their lifestyle that keeps them from enduring the chaos of the modern world. Their lives often include being smashed on car windshields, being eaten by birds, or smacked as they bite me while I sit by a bonfire, but even those outcomes don’t seem that bad.
But the notion that I no longer swing hard enough to slip is what I contemplate most. Is this where I’m at, not just on the golf course but in life? Has my life come to the intersection of slow and safe? In other words, those big swings often led to big mistakes like big slices into deep woods. Has my sedentary lifestyle also eliminated the “big mistake?”
I’m not trying to tempt fate, but I don’t have a tattoo and I love to sleep. Best of all, I’m 67 this year, which is just “prime.”