Fuck Golf Courses!
ONT: Gate 402 09:56pm
Loaded on a 737, waiting for a slot to take off for LV and then on to Houston, to go shove a handful of sliderules up some engineers’ asses (but that’s another story). The plane is maybe one-quarter full (as opposed to three-quarters empty), so I grab a seat in the completely empty rear of the plane. Completely empty, that is, except for the flight attendant. I’m rereading The Monkey’s Wrench, by Primo Levi, for the third time and I figure this is a good quiet time and place for it.
But it’s not to be. The thoughtless male flight attendant sitting two rows back blathers endlessly, and loudly, to his golf buddy on the other end of the cell phone about the details of their upcoming “big golf weekend”……..in Anaheim. To wit:
“….so, if we team up four to a room, we’ll each pay $78.43 and get three games and two nights—….huh?...yeah…$156.86…uh huh…$156.86…each…No, I mean each room…well, yeah, each bed, I guess…uh huh…one-five-six-eight-six!.........are you drunk?...it sounds like you’re drunk!....jezus!...one-fifty-six-eighty-six!...each…YES—”
At this point I’m unbuckling to grab the phone and scream something like, “LOOK, YOU FUCKING BOKANOVSKOVIC, IF YOU’RE THAT CONCERNED ABOUT A HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS THEN YOU SHOULDN’T BE PLAYING GOLF IN THE FIRST PLACE! IT’S A HUNDRED AND FIFTY SIX BUCKS, OK?! DIVIDED BY TWO! AND YOU FLIP FOR THE BED! GOT IT?!
But, mercifully, the conversation ends, and along with it my Walter Mitty moment, as the captain dings and announces “It’s time to get outta Dodge.” (only on Southwest).
We finally queued up, turned westward, hit the turbochargers and clawed into the sky. And the idiot flight attendant turned out to be quite a nice guy. Unfortunate, because I was really ready to despise him, and I had a lot of despisation to unload after fighting with engineers for three month over a two-week engineering project. But the mindless golf conversation did bring up an interesting memory; a memory which dovetailed into the frustration of modern “interconnectedness.”
When he mentioned Anaheim Hills Golf Course I suddenly saw, in my mind of course, a huge rack of antlers connected to (what seemed at the time) a huge buck, both of which were jumping nearly right over my head. It was so sudden it nearly made me jerk in my seat. A couple of friends and I were exploring the construction site of the aforementioned golf course when this big deer came bounding up the hillside unaware of our presence until the last moment, at which time it was evidently easier to just leap over us that it was to change course and go around. So there I am, looking at the belly of this big beautiful animal, all no more than a mile from one of the busiest and most godforsaken freeways in the world, the 91 freeway.
We watched it bounce like it was springs, taking leaps of 35 feet at a hop, and disappear off into the chaparral. I’d never seen a deer before, much less had one spring over top of me, and I was sorely disappointed when I realized that with this new golf course going in, and the thousand of acres of homes to follow, it was unlikely I’d ever see one again, at least around those parts, so close to home.
Fuck golf, I thought. And fuck golf courses, too.
And now, sitting here in the back of this nearly empty plane, pining for the good ol’ days when a guy could read a book or a magazine while stranded in a doctor’s waiting room, or at the DMV…or on an airplane….without having to suffer the never-ending one-sided chatter of inane cell phone monversations, I think, Fuck golfers.
And fuck cell phones, too!
Loaded on a 737, waiting for a slot to take off for LV and then on to Houston, to go shove a handful of sliderules up some engineers’ asses (but that’s another story). The plane is maybe one-quarter full (as opposed to three-quarters empty), so I grab a seat in the completely empty rear of the plane. Completely empty, that is, except for the flight attendant. I’m rereading The Monkey’s Wrench, by Primo Levi, for the third time and I figure this is a good quiet time and place for it.
But it’s not to be. The thoughtless male flight attendant sitting two rows back blathers endlessly, and loudly, to his golf buddy on the other end of the cell phone about the details of their upcoming “big golf weekend”……..in Anaheim. To wit:
“….so, if we team up four to a room, we’ll each pay $78.43 and get three games and two nights—….huh?...yeah…$156.86…uh huh…$156.86…each…No, I mean each room…well, yeah, each bed, I guess…uh huh…one-five-six-eight-six!.........are you drunk?...it sounds like you’re drunk!....jezus!...one-fifty-six-eighty-six!...each…YES—”
At this point I’m unbuckling to grab the phone and scream something like, “LOOK, YOU FUCKING BOKANOVSKOVIC, IF YOU’RE THAT CONCERNED ABOUT A HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS THEN YOU SHOULDN’T BE PLAYING GOLF IN THE FIRST PLACE! IT’S A HUNDRED AND FIFTY SIX BUCKS, OK?! DIVIDED BY TWO! AND YOU FLIP FOR THE BED! GOT IT?!
But, mercifully, the conversation ends, and along with it my Walter Mitty moment, as the captain dings and announces “It’s time to get outta Dodge.” (only on Southwest).
We finally queued up, turned westward, hit the turbochargers and clawed into the sky. And the idiot flight attendant turned out to be quite a nice guy. Unfortunate, because I was really ready to despise him, and I had a lot of despisation to unload after fighting with engineers for three month over a two-week engineering project. But the mindless golf conversation did bring up an interesting memory; a memory which dovetailed into the frustration of modern “interconnectedness.”
When he mentioned Anaheim Hills Golf Course I suddenly saw, in my mind of course, a huge rack of antlers connected to (what seemed at the time) a huge buck, both of which were jumping nearly right over my head. It was so sudden it nearly made me jerk in my seat. A couple of friends and I were exploring the construction site of the aforementioned golf course when this big deer came bounding up the hillside unaware of our presence until the last moment, at which time it was evidently easier to just leap over us that it was to change course and go around. So there I am, looking at the belly of this big beautiful animal, all no more than a mile from one of the busiest and most godforsaken freeways in the world, the 91 freeway.
We watched it bounce like it was springs, taking leaps of 35 feet at a hop, and disappear off into the chaparral. I’d never seen a deer before, much less had one spring over top of me, and I was sorely disappointed when I realized that with this new golf course going in, and the thousand of acres of homes to follow, it was unlikely I’d ever see one again, at least around those parts, so close to home.
Fuck golf, I thought. And fuck golf courses, too.
And now, sitting here in the back of this nearly empty plane, pining for the good ol’ days when a guy could read a book or a magazine while stranded in a doctor’s waiting room, or at the DMV…or on an airplane….without having to suffer the never-ending one-sided chatter of inane cell phone monversations, I think, Fuck golfers.
And fuck cell phones, too!
posted by Jefferson | 9:49 AM
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