Ah….one more time. I was at work today and two of the kids I work with are staying in the dorms now and they are required to write rules for their room that everyone else has to follow. So they wrote stuff like, “Take your shoes off before you come in,” and ,”Knock before you enter,” and things that actually make sense. Now, since everyone has to follow these rules, it seems to me that it’d be much more fun to make some cool rules. I suggested this fun series of rules:

1) You must always talk in a foreign accent.
2) Every sentence must contain the word “dragon”
3) When you speak to me, it must be in the form of a story.

Now this was just to give you a taste, but I think I may implement similar rules when I get back to school. Think of the fun conversations. Everyone in my room will be talking with either English or Irish accents, most likely, and it’s constantly story time. Not only that, but every story will involve dragons. What more could I ask for. Here is a sample conversation I had with myself.

Spencer: (English) Hello, my good chap, you rascally dragon you. I hear, I
say, that this good ole fellow, Spencer, I daresay his name,
is going to the bank soon…to fight dragons?

Translation: Hey, are you going to the bank?

Spencer: (Irish) Aye, once upon a time such a wee lad as this Spencer you
speak of may have roamed the Emerald Isle in search of
dragons and a quick twenty.

Translation: Yeah, I need a twenty.

Spencer: (English) As I do recall, my fine sir, my auto was employed in this
quest for dragons and a quick twenty. Righto, (dragon).
If only I had been allowed to traverse with him to slay the
dragons while also procuring a quick twenty.

Translation: My car’s in the shop, can I catch a ride?

Spencer: (Irish) Ah, but of course…aye, there may still be a way to get to
the dragons. As legend goes, Spencer will ride through
the green fields every time a friend asks to seek dragons.

Translation: Sure. Anytime.

I was recently at a concert showcasing some Celtic music. It was a wonderful performance and loads of fun, but it got me thinking, which is always dangerous.

At one point the band begins to play a jig and people start clapping to the beat. Now…if I were a musician, that would really really bug me. Think about it. You’ve been training for years and years and years working tirelessly day in and day out to be one of the best at your given musical talent. You have studied meter, rhythm, melodies, and every technical aspect of music one could imagine. You are on stage having a blast and rocking out to some Celtic music with your fellow musicians….and now…you are letting 100 people, off the street, try and maintain the beat for you. That’s guts. Have you ever heard this happen? Everyone ends up on different beats until they get tired and quit or discouraged because the band changed the tempo, but you will always have 3 guys in the back still trying their hardest to keep it alive…it’s like “The Wave” of concerts…once it’s started, it just won’t die…it’s amazing. Now, from the spectator’s point of view, I refuse to clap. That’s a lot of freakin’ pressure to keep with the beat. I paid good money to see these educated musicians perform…now why do they need me to keep the beat for them? I better be getting’ a cut. I mean, what happens if the group starts sucking and all you hear is, “Well, that guy in the fourth row just really threw me off.” I don’t need that.

I just noticed that this sort of came off like a rant…that’s funny.

Ah, to be writing again. The feeling of the keyboard under my fingers…reminds me of…well, writing. But I digress. After quite the long hiatus, I believe that perhaps it is again time for me to try my hand at blogging. I, as always, promise nothing, but hope for the best.

I would like to tell a story—a story of perseverance and commitment. I was recently watching the US Open, in which many of the top golfers from around the world were competing, and the routine scores were in the upper 70s to 80s. That was some crazy golf. But the point, my friends, is that those rounds were quite poor…and this set me on my current train of thought, sending me back to a magical place and time, known as Fairhope and middle school….and yes, I know those are two places, but I’m going to pretend middle school is an age. At the time, I had recently become interested in golf. A few of my friends played, and they looked like they were having fun, so I figured, “What the hey,” and jumped in. Now, my father, an avid golfer himself, did what any good father would do and signed me up to play a very competitive series of tournaments at some of the nicest courses in the area….and by nice, I mean really freakin’ hard. But anyways. At the time, I was but a mere 4’10” at best, and using my father’s hand-me-down clubs. He’s 5’10”, and needless to say, golf clubs are not one size fits all. I had never played a round of golf before, let alone a real tournament in which you had to “follow the rules.” But still, I’d give it that ole middle school try and do my best. I mean, at least I was signed up for the 13-14 year old B flight. I may be bad, but compared to the other kids, I won’t be too awful. So off I go on my first golf adventure.

I arrive in Fairhope at Rock Creek Golf Course. This is probably one of the premier golf courses in the area, complete with its own subdivision and plenty of SUVs. It includes massive undulating hills on both sides of the narrow fairways and more forced carries over swamp than holes. Needless to say, me and the drop area became close friends. It becomes time to start my round and I’m paired with two other kids who are both a good bit bigger than me, but that comes as no shock to a guy my size, so I thought nothing of it. Game on. Well, for my first round of golf, my Dad probably could have picked a better environment. I don’t think I ever touched the fairway except to cross it from side to side looking for my ball. At least once or twice I drove the ball past the ladies tee box. And it’s a good thing I had played baseball for so many years because I was frequently taking cuts at my ball, stopped securely on a hill, chest-high. As if the humiliation of the experience was not enough, we were required to carry our clubs for 18 holes in mid-June. Granted, with as many golf balls as I donated to the course, my bag became considerably lighter as I went on….but still. As an aid to the tournament, they had asked us to mark down in a little book not only our scores on each hole, but also what club we used off the tee, if we hit the fairway, what club we hit to approach the green, and if we hit it in regulation. That was fine for the most part, but I hit so many approaches into the green I didn’t know what club I should put down. Meanwhile, my compatriots were shooting in the 80s. That was a real confidence booster.

Finally….finally…we finished and got off that forsaken land. I turn in my scorecard and then, yes, then and only then, do my little friends tell me that an 8 is the highest the tournament lets you take on any one hole. So of course, I thanked them for that. And then, my score is posted, under the 15-18 A Flight. “Whoops…I guess that was our bad,” they tell me. “We accidentally signed up you, the worst player out here on his first day of golfing, with kids much older and infinitely better….Haha…well I guess we’ll all have a good laugh at that one.” Yeah…I’m still laughing.

Ultimately, what it comes down to, is I believe I have recorded the worst round of golf ever played, from its birth in Scotland, to this last weekend at the US Open. Now, if you remember correctly, an 8 is the highest you can record, so you max out at 8 X 18, or 144. That, my friends is a lot of strokes. But remember…I did not know that 8 was the highest score you could record…so I kept on going…and going….all the way to 210. “Wow!” you say. “How is that possible?”…which indicates to me that you apparently have not been reading any of my story, but I guess I’ll let that slide.

Now, if you are reading my story, then you remember that this is a story of perseverance and commitment. I shot a 210…over 18 holes…but I finished. That’s the key. I never gave up, despite everything that went wrong that day. This is a fairly long story for such a short moral, but it’s very important. If you ever feel like giving up because something got too hard, just think of this story, remember 210, and picture the13-year-old kid traveling the course with a golf bag taller than him. That should do the trick.