Be Careful What You Ask For
Who knows? You might get it...
I fingered the contents of the bedraggled-looking sleeve distastefully. The balls were a brand I don't normally play, and didn't particularly like. They had been a gift, from some distant and now-forgotten occasion like Christmas or my birthday, from some time rapidly receding into the distant mists of the past, and I was basically using them out of frugality (that is, cheapness).
I called their condition to the attention of my playing companions. They were beaten up, and covered with tree sap, asphalt burns, and those little curly-cue shavings the grooves on your clubs make when you actually hit one good. The paint was peeling off the logos and writing. "I've been playing these for three or four weeks. They won't go away. Maybe they should be my new brand." My companions chuckled sympathetically.
Of course you know what happened. I lost all three of them that day at the Butte. One in the swamp on #5, one in the pond on #13, and one in the woods on #16 in the middle of a cotton blizzard. (It's that time of the year when all the cottonwoods are shedding cotton for all they're worth, and that makes it really hard to find any small white object.)
Gleefully, I broke out a new sleeve of balls I actually did like, and put them into play on the very next round.
All over town I can hear people saying, "Whoa! Martin playing with a new ball! One that cost real money???" Now, now... calm down. No of course not one that cost real money. The last time I spent real money for a golf ball was circa 1988, and it was at K-Mart. (Come to think of it, I may have purchased my first ball retriever right about then...) No, these balls were part of the lure for signing up for Colorado Avid Golfer, a discount coupon book for rounds of golf. Now can I get back to my story, please?
Ominously I immediately lost one in that same swamp on #5. "Wait a minute," I thought to myself. "That wasn't supposed to happen." But golf is a game you really can't play if you're afraid of losing balls. That's why I normally play with recycled balls, which I steadily harvest throughout the year (from streams, ponds, roughs, forests, ...). I keep crates of them in the garage, sorted by brand, number, condition... Still, you always feel sad to lose an actual new ball. Even if it didn't cost you real money...
Oh well, it will probably turn up again. Or one just like it.
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