At
some point in her life, a woman will go the "self-improvement"
route. The purpose is to get a woman out
of the house, give her a goal or a dream to hang onto, and focus a little
attention on herself for a change. In
short, it gets her out of the proverbial rut.
But one of the hazards of self-improvement is that people overdo, and
before you know it, they're taking themselves seriously.
Myrtle
was a real golf enthusiast. We met her
in a six-week golf clinic at the YWCA.
To the rest of us, golf was something to do with your hands while you
talked. With Myrtle it was
different. Whenever we got a foursome
together, it was always Myrtle who insisted on keeping the scores in ink. Her clubs were never rusted or dulled by wads
of bubble gum. (She was horrified the
day I found a pair of child's training pants in my golf bag.)
She
always played by the book. This was
upsetting. We used to try to jazz up the
game a bit. For example, if you forgot
to say, "Mother, may I?" before you teed off, you had to add a
stroke. If you clipped the duck on the
pond and made him quack, you didn't have to play the sixteenth hole at all, and
if you had more than fifteen strokes on one hole, you didn't have to putt
out. This used to drive Myrtle
crazy. She never understood why we
allowed each other five "I didn't see you" swings in one game.
Then
one day she arrived at the course, bubbling with excitement. "I've found a way to take points off my
score," she said. (At last, we
thought, she's going to cheat like the rest of us.) "I have just read this article by a
British obstetrician who says pregnant women play better golf than women who
are not pregnant. He conducted this
extensive survey and discovered golf scores were bettered by ten or fifteen
strokes."
"But
surely," we gasped, "you're not seriously considering . . ."
"If
the road to motherhood is paved with birdies, pars, and eagles," she
answered, "call me Mom."
The
first few months of pregnancy, Myrtle wasn't too sensational on the golf
course. She was nauseous. Her normally neat golf bag was a mass of soda cracker
crumbs and once when I offered her a piece of cold pizza, she quit playing.
Right there on the fifth hole, she quit.
During
the early fall, she had a bit of trouble with swollen ankles, so her salt
intake and her golf games were kept at a minimum. "Just wait until
spring," she said. "I'll be the talk of the club." She was. When
Myrtle tried to tee off, it was like trying to land on an aircraft carrier without
radar. She couldn't see her feet, let alone her ball. To be blunt, she was too
pregnant to putt.
Last
week we dropped by Myrtle's house en route to the golf course. (She'll resume
play when the baby is older.) We talked about the good doctor's survey.
"Who is this man?" asked one of the girls. "A medical
doctor," Myrtle insisted, "who has done extensive research on women
golfers. Here is the picture and the clipping."
We
looked in disbelief. There was no doubt in our minds. He was the same man who
played behind us the day we dodged the sprinkling system and made the rule that
if you got wet, you had to drive the golf cart in reverse back to the
clubhouse.
Boy,
men sure are bad sports.
-
Erma Bombeck, At Wit's End, Nelson
Doubleday, Inc., 1965
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