Golf balls are hard.

In the middle of the night last week, while getting up to “do something”, I stepped on a golf ball in my living room. It hurt. Golf balls are hard. I stumbled into some furniture and swore a lot while dancing around on one foot. I step on a lot of golf balls. I don’t know where they all come from. Before mowing the lawn, it is always imperative that I conduct an extensive search, as I have learned after replacing my large and expensive living room window, that my mower does not like golf balls. While massaging the small, dimpled, round bruise on the bottom of my foot, I pondered how I have so many golf balls littering my house. I came to the conclusion that my buddy, Robin, is the single, glaring factor, a true smoking gun if there ever was one.
Robin is my golfing buddy and he is a certified ball hound. He can spy them in deep weeds and will dig through heavy brush and brambles to get one. He always gives them to me, as I usually need them. His delivery of a new found ball often includes him yelling, “Duck!!” as the ball whizzes by my head. I have learned to comply quickly. I do not turn around and ask “what for?” anymore. He is to be trusted when he screams, “Duck!”. He is a good shot and is, in fact, the prime suspect in the greatest water balloon strike in history.
One summer day, several years ago, while I stood by the shore of Lake Washington, I was nailed square in the head. The blow was so devastating that only minute fragments of the balloon remained, not enough for even the finest forensics to find a print. The only evidence leading me Robin’s direction was witnessing him rolling around on the dock, fifty yards away, buckled over and purple-faced from laughing so hard. It was an AFV moment.
Robin is, also, a good golfer and doesn’t lose many balls. I, however, typically lose several in a round. I don’t, though, lose as many as he finds. Thus, I have a surplus. My kids have discovered this and like to play with them for about a second and then leave them laying all over the place for me to “find”. They never use the same ball. There must be something magically intriguing about the mystery of a new ball, as if it might somehow be different from the fifteen that are already sitting in plain sight, ready to be played with.
They have no interest in using the existing balls. I’m not sure why this is, as I am not sure of many things my kids do. They operate on a different level. The breakdown, in this case, I think, is that they don’t ever pick the balls up. They don’t care how many golf balls line the flower beds or reside dusty and dog-haired under the couches, because they don’t touch them but once. I have asked, but like most things I ask them to do, they simply don’t do it. I’m sure I could force the issue and make a point of violently compelling them to pick up the golf balls, but it would require more work and pain for me than just picking them up myself. I am too lazy to make them do it, I suppose is the issue here. I try to unlazify myself by considering that one painful experience will change them and I will never have to pick up another golf ball around my house again. But, being a realist, I know that this would not be true and I would only be lying to myself by actually believing that my kids could ever be inspired to clean something up without a battle and some serious threat of harm to their persons. So, I pick up the golf balls and curse them and Robin and myself.
This is my typical response to things I don’t like, but cannot or will not change. I recognize that I am victim of myself. I create the weather and the circumstances that allow my kids to drive me bananas. Maybe, though, on some level, I enjoy it. Picking up golf balls daily gives me a reason to complain. It shifts my focus from less banal concerns and gives me an easy cop-out from the real, meaty items that deserve an intentional eyeball. They are a scapegoat. Knowing this does not make me uncomfortable. I, like everyone else, has real worries and problems and struggles. Whining about golf balls is a great and maybe necessary distraction from the “important” stuff.
Life is heavy. Golf balls are light. I will take light over heavy nearly every time. I do certainly understand that the heavy can only be avoided for so long and must be dealt with surely, deliberately and swiftly and I promise to work on those things soon……..right after I pick up all these stinkin’ golf balls!!!!