His Nibs and his “Sinister”, as he calls her, took me ‘gophing’ (The Nipper for two years referred to golfers as ‘gophers’, which quite confused many people for a bit) yesterday. I rather enjoy gophing. But here’s the thing – I don’t give a fiddler’s fart whether there are people behind me – if they’re faster than me they can skip ahead of me (they call this “playing through”, don’t you know). I don’t much care what you’re supposed to wear or not wear. I don’t really care about all that ‘gentlemenly’ business.
So this means I get to save rather a lot of money by *not* playing on courses where these things matter.
His Nibs can be somewhat …insistent… that, even on little par-three courses where, according to the really good gophers around here, that kind of stuff doesn’t matter, we follow The Rules. Rules, I say, rules are suggestions, really. People don’t *actually* care if you wear sandals on this course. People don’t *actually* care if your Sinister and I share a set of clubs. Besides, knowing the way your Sinister gophs, she’ll probably hit anyone from the staff with a ball, so we have nothing to worry about.
“Be nice,” His Nibs says.
“No, she’s right,” his Sinister says. “Last time I was here, I think I just about hit someone on every hole.”
“And you hit every tree on the course!” I say helpfully to His Nibs.
His Nibs sighs *meaningfully* and begins some crazy stretching thing.
But here’s the deal – it’s terribly fun. When it doesn’t matter, it’s terribly fun. His Nibs said, “should we keep score?”
And I said, “the only person who’s going to be bothered by the score you keep is you, so it’s probably a Bad Idea for your own enjoyment of the morning.”
We don’t keep score. Fun should not include arithmetic and figurin’.
Here, I have to say to Sean-by-the-Sea, “You told me so. And you were right.”
Gophing. Huh. Who knew?
i make squee noises when you tell me stuff.