Embracing the Cliché

Until June 7th of 2008 (Would that be E-Day, did the letters keep going like that? How'd they get back around to VE day then? Yeah, I thought so) I hadn't picked up a golf club for probably ten years. Back in 1998 when the clubheads of my Wal-Mart special irons (purchased by my Grandfather to whom I am eternally grateful) started to randomly break loose from their clubshafts I just stopped playing. I had some other things to do, went to college, picked up computer tinkering as a hobby, went to medical school, went to residency, got married...and that sums up the last decade of my life in six simple phrases. I didn't have the money for new clubs and I didn't have the time for such a slow game, and I didn't have the desire to be outside for such long periods of time. I don't remember ever missing golf, but I, and I'm sure Jeffrey, can remember a time when I secreted golf from my pores. It was something my brothers and I did everyday in our small town of Friend. There wasn't a lot else to do. When we weren't playing golf we were reading about it incessantly. How I could spend so much time reading Golf Magazine I'll never fathom. When we weren't reading about golf we were watching it on television. To some I'm sure watching golf sits in their brain as the archetype for boring. When people need an example of boredom watching golf on television pops into their heads. Knowing my personality as I do, then (I've picked up some things after twenty-nine years of living with me) it baffles me why I stopped playing so abruptly and never went back. I think it probably has to do with the mentality it takes to go through post-graduate training. I'm sure Jeffrey spends no time at the golf course in Tucson. I also believe that it had something to do with geography. There aren't a lot of golf courses in midtown Omaha, but then again I never once set foot on the Wray Country Club links. All of this, I'm sure you'll notice, is set up for the reveal that is hinted at by that title teaser. It turns out that although Shaleah has only played golf once or twice before it's an activity that we both enjoy, that gets us outside, and that we can do together (at least until our dance lessons begin in October. Stop snickering.) Anyway, we are now two doctors who play golf regularly, or at least we go to the driving range regularly. And so today as the clubhead from my fifteen year old five iron flew down the range (the last of my original set of clubs to survive) it suddenly occurred to me that I knew where to spend my stimulus check that I've already spent thrice over. The new clubs will ship tomorrow, arrive next week, and sit next to the bicycle and the new hard drive array representing the same money spent three times.