Somehow, I Got Old

After nursing a cold for the better part of a week, I celebrated New Years Eve the way I imagine they do in our finer nursing homes- with a couple Tylenol Cold Nighttime, and a 10:30 bedtime. Now, I am sitting in my easy chair with the Rose Bowl Parade on TV and a heat pack on my back, trying to work out a knot. It can only be a short trip to the early bird special at the Old Country Buffet from here.

The Golf Channel makes me feel no younger- it's a special on Arnie. Great. The man whose greatest achievements occurred mostly before I was born. Fifty years of muscular, restricted swings. When I first started playing, it was actually Arnie's swing that I tried to emulate, thinking (not unreasonably) that since it was Arnie's swing, it must have the swing. Thank God I was born in the days before Furyk.

So there I was, 20 or so, never played an actual course nor taken a lesson and only ever taken full swings on a range a few time, suddenly gifted with third- or fourth-hand Spaldings (blades and persimmon, of course- thankfully not hickory shafted). I went to the Rutgers course after class one day, and as befits someone who is secretly a dandy (in the Victorian sense, thank you), I put on very nice khakis and a button down shirt, a la the 1920s (no tie or vest, which is something of a shame, it's a very dapper look). No one who actually had played golf before thought to tell me that I should take a full backswing or follow through; not that it mattered, I would probably have reposponded "Well, my swing is naturally like Arnie's."

Pretense- I never outgrew that.