Why am I lame at golf, chess, bridge, billiards and backgammon?

 

I am pathetic.  I am impaired in so many ways.  I’m house-painting challenged.  That would be inside and outside the house.  I’m wallpaper and picture-hanging disadvantaged.

 

     I’m chess and bridge incompetent.  These are thinking men’s sports and thinking wears me slap out.  My mother-in-law tried to teach me bridge and laughed herself silly for the first fifteen minutes.  Then she got ugly mad at my ineptitude and made me pick up all the cards she’d thrown around the room. 

 

A friend of mine, Charles, is a tournament level backgammon player.  I’m clueless when he talks about the game.  But, I am impressed!  Charles is also a single digit handicap golfer and plays a great hand of bridge.  He’s been known to knock off every member of his club in chess games.  Guys named “Charles” are always smart and multi-talented.

 

I’m also a fishing idiot.  My brother-in-law, Roy, took me bass fishing last summer and I lost nine lures.  I lost one that got hooked permanently when I cast it on the shingled roof of a boathouse.  I try to confine my fishing to the vicarious excitement of ESPN Saturday morning fishing shows.  It looks so easy on those shows.  Cast and catch a lunker.  Cast and catch.  So easy.

    

Worst of all, I am golf-impaired.  It’s terrible to be fifty-six and golf-impaired.  My friends and clients all golf.  My friends and clients are mostly within ten years of me, give or take a couple of years.

 

     I’m not positive, but I’m pretty damnsure that men my age who don’t golf are in violation of some Federal regulation. 

 

     Every March I attend the NAPL Top Management Conference at some fancy GOLF resort in Florida or Arizona.  Every afternoon the other attendees and their spouses go out to GOLF.  I take a nap.  Then at dinner, my companions talk about GOLF.  At my age my dreams are lousy.  I can’t talk about my nap.  There’s nothing good to report about my naps.  I’m dream-impaired.  That’s sad. 

 

     I bet I get asked, “Do you golf?” about twice a day.  My answer is usually an anemic apology but sometimes I get a little hostile and I try to one-up the inquirer and I bark, “Well, yeah, I may not golf but you should see me plunge a toilet!”

 

     Some days I come home and mope because I’ve been asked about my golf game several times.  Last Christmas my golf depression was so bad that my family went out and bought me one left-handed used driver and a cardboard box full of about 100 used golf balls.  One lousy old driver and a bunch of sliced up balls – that’s my golf set.  Pretty rotten gift, huh?

 

     Here’s a secret.  Last May I snuck on a golf course with my set in one of those big black plastic yard bags.  I slung it over my shoulder and pretended it was one of those fancy leather golf bags.  Shot an 83. 

 

Then I quit halfway down the sixth fairway.  It was getting dark, my back was killing me and I only had 17 balls left in the bag.