10/23/12
I know it's hard to fathom, but I wasn't always a super-smooth mega-hulk of a man. No, throughout my middle school and high school years, I was quite the recluse. I didn't feel confident or outgoing. I felt smart enough--just not very brave. And girls--that was a different beast all together. I knew they were different, and yet, very much the same. There was a certain apprehension I felt around the female species, and it never really ironed itself out until college, really. I knew it was awesome being around them. But my awkwardness was magnified to such immense proportions...I just didn't know what to do around them. Be funny? Be strange? Be quiet?
I figured all that stuff out, though, eventually. Or, at least, I found someone willing to put up with my awkwardness and shortcomings. She's done so since I was 19. Damn. It feels like yesterday.
But my awkwardness with girls has been replaced by an awkwardness with golf. I wasted ten more bucks at the Golf Dome again today, and I'm just fucking terrible--really. I mean, I can hack my way to a 98 or 97. It's never pretty. I have a couple of good chips and putts. But everything else is awful.
And I look around at the douchebaggery at the dome--you know, 24 year old dudes who you know are crushing beer cans on their faces and farting on each other at parties. They can hit the ball. I thought to myself, "Why does this game work out for them, but not for me? I can't do that."
Then it hit me. That's how it used to be with girls when I was in high school. I knew that the dudes who were always with girls--different girls--every week, were pretty shitty people over all. But it wasn't in my skill set. Now, girls, fairly figured out. Well, at least one girl. Many of the rest of them still seem a bit kooky, from afar. But golf is just never going to treat me well. I can't figure it out. I've had friends at the range--several of them--trying to help me out. But I feel like Steve Carell in 40-Year-Old Virgin--thanks for the tips, but it's obviously not helping me. I've even paid instructors. Like, four of them. If the golf course is the Sadie Hawkins dance, I'm the dude standing by the punch, hands in my pockets, wishing I was back at home playing Nintendo instead.
