When I’m feeling a little too good about myself – a little too self-assured – nothing brings me back down to earth, to my normal state of self-loathing and despair, like five hours of nonstop futility and embarrassment. No, I’m not talking about the time I spent writing last week’s blog article (although I can see why you might have jumped to that conclusion). I’m talking about golf.
Nothing reminds me of how inadequate I am like spending half a day in nature, searching in vain for tee shots gone terribly awry, in pursuit of lost golf balls hidden like buried treasure deep in the woods. Which leads me to this poignant ethical question:
If you lose your tee shot in the woods and in the process of looking for your lost ball find another ball, which your golfing partner does not notice, how many yards closer to the fairway can you move your new ball to improve your lie?
[Background: Last week, I spent 19 hours over five days dealing with the tech support call center from my Internet Service Provider (ISP) – all because I installed their software “security program” from one of their email offers, which mucked up my computer, making it completely inoperable.
Below is the actual enthusiastic letter of appreciation I sent to my ISP. Because I don’t wish to embarrass my ISP by name, I have chosen to alter the company’s actual name to protect its identity.
Everything written below is the 100% truth of my actual nightmare experience. Well, perhaps 90%. – tej]
Can I just say, I AM YOUR BIGGEST FAN! Your commitment to keeping your customers satisfied has never been more on display than over the past five days. In that time I’ve gotten to know many of your tech support team members so well, they almost feel like family to me now. I am writing to tell you how grateful I am for everything that you have done to restore my faith in large bureaucratic, monopolistic utility companies for which their customers are merely numbers on an income statement spreadsheet.
My original plan for last Saturday had been to go on a nice long day hike with my family. Little did I know that at precisely 9:07am that morning KOMKAST was going to radically change my agenda for the next five days. What an educational experience it was. Can I share it with you?
Oops. Seems I accidentally pressed the RETURN key on the Headline a bit too soon. My bad. What I meant to write was:
“Why Baseball is better than having sextuplets.”
Frankly, do I really need to defend this position? I mean, seriously, who would rather parent six screaming babies than to go to the ballpark, watch a game, while scarfing down peanuts, a hot dog and a cold beer? Anybody?
I have loved baseball ever since I was a young child. I even named this humor blog View from the Bleachers in part as a nod to my favorite spectator sport. Baseball has long been called America’s pastime. The first baseball game was played way back in 1846. As any high school student today could tell you, that’s probably like maybe over 70 years ago.
Having grown up in Albany, NY, in the 1960s, listening on the radio in the 1960’s to the then dismal, cellar-dwelling New York Mets, I was hooked at an early age. I wanted to name our eldest daughter DiMaggio in honor of Joltin’ Joe. I tried to convince my wife her friends would call her Maggie, but I was overruled. So we named her Yastrzemski instead.
For years, our nation’s law enforcement agencies have made great technological strides in their efforts to hunt down criminals. Thanks to popular shows like CSI Miami, CSI New York, CSI Las Vegas, and the lesser known CSI Akron, CSI Schenectady and CSI Terre Haute, Indiana, police in our nation’s most crime-ridden cities (have you been to Terre Haute lately? Lock your doors!) are now able to use sophisticated tools to solve perplexing crimes and track down the bad guys.
But soon our nation’s police may turn to a decidedly low tech solution to help them catch a thief, that is, if they take my expert crime-prevention counsel. I give you Exhibit A: baggy pants – preferably worn about mid-thigh – by fashion-conscious urban gang members.
I recently discovered that in the past nine months no less than three robberies have been foiled as the would-be robber tripped over his low-riding baggy pants while attempting to make his getaway. Imagine if all robbers wore baggy pants how much safer a nation we would be?
[Author’s note: the following is a painfully true, 100% accurate story and it’s the reason I knew at an early age that I would NEVER become a scientist.]
When I was in tenth grade, I had a science experiment to do and I was running very short on time. It was due in a couple days and I had only barely started on my experiment. I decided to do an experiment involving “rust” and the rusting process, and how some elements can accelerate the rusting process while others tend to inhibit or decelerate it.
Anyway, I had one final experiment to do — to test the rust-inhibiting or accelerating effect on metal of boiled linseed oil. I had never heard of linseed oil (I was just reading from a book of high school science projects and one of them was about rust). So I made sure to precisely follow the experiment’s procedures as set forth in the book. One of the elements it suggested using to test the rusting process was “boiled linseed oil.” So I went to whatever store sells linseed oil and came home and began the experiment at about 4:30pm. I should note at this point that my father, for reasons still unknown to me, chose this day of all days to come home at 5pm rather than his usual 6:30pm. The relevance of this point will become clear in a couple paragraphs, so be patient.
As far as I know, I am not the strongest man in the world. I doubt I would ever be mistaken for the fastest either. But I think I can say with a high degree of confidence, that if there were a category in the Guinness Book of World Records for the world’s MOST INFLEXIBLE HUMAN BEING, my picture would appear.
Our family recently joined a health club. What a terrible mistake that was. This past week, I took my very first YOGA class ever. Oh My God. Somehow – don’t ask me how – I made it through it. But if you’re over 50 and have never tried yoga before, let mine be a cautionary tale. Don’t even think about trying yoga – unless you enjoy intense pain coupled with public humiliation.
My competition in the class looked harmless enough: 15 women of various ages and sizes and three men of Indian descent who appeared to be in top physical fitness. These 15 women and the three Indian men (who, as best as I could tell came straight out of yoga central casting) all came equipped with their yoga mats, matching yoga outfits and bare feet. There was this one lone middle-aged white guy who came in without a yoga mat, wearing a dorky T-shirt that read “I’m in shape. Round is a shape” and sporting conspicuous white socks and sneakers. That middle-aged white guy would be me. In retrospect, I’m surprised an alarm bell did not sound the moment I walked through the door, declaring that a yoga pretender was attempting to break into this yoga sanctuary. I had absolutely no business being there.
When I’m feeling a little too good about myself – a little too self-assured – nothing brings me back down to earth, to my normal state of self-loathing and despair, like five hours of nonstop futility and embarrassment. No, I’m not talking about the time I spent writing last week’s blog article (although I can see why you might have jumped to that conclusion). I’m talking about golf.
Oops. Seems I accidentally pressed the RETURN key on the Headline a bit too soon. My bad. What I meant to write was:
