Mini Golf Monologue

Mini golf. A child's game. A sad parody of the real thing.

Putters only. Mine is clutched tightly in my fist. No silly chicanes or cartoonish windmill arms will stop me from shooting nine straight holes-in-one.

It's hot. Teeth clenched. Sun beats down, mocking me. Grip sweaty. Hole out of focus. One simple bounce off the east boundary and I'm in. Just the right angle. Just the right amount of force.

I swing. Gently. But firmly. "Clack" goes the ball as it leaps forward, off my club. "Click" goes the ball as it caroms off the wooden boundary.

It's heading right for the hole. Simple. A child's game.

The ball hops over the hole, petulantly. Comes to rest against the back wall. My face turns red. I hurl the putter, screaming. It bends in half against a tree.

I fall to my knees.

It's beaten me.

Again. 

The Fifth Hole

Sometime in the early 1980s Mom and Dad took us to Calway Park in Calgary. We played mini golf. And yet, even though I'm right there in the picture with my brother and father, I have no memory of it. I remember the roller coaster...but that's about it. It astounds me that we forget most of what we've done and where we've been. It seems a crippling disability to me, and yet we just live with it.