I’m not what you’d call an avid golfer. “Occasional” and “horrid” are better adjectives.
I’m not like my buddy Kenny, a 42-year-old divorced architect who’s played at least three times a week for the past 10 years. He talks golf. He reads golf. He’ll die on the golf course. Happily.
Here’s all you have to know about Kenny: It’s The Joke. It’s virtually the only one he ever tells. Myself, I’ve heard it four times. I tell him I’ve heard it. Doesn’t stop him. He says it could have been about him if his wife hadn’t left him for an insurance agent seven years ago.
Forgive me if you’ve heard it:
Two guys are on the ninth tee when a funeral procession rolls by the course. One guy takes off his hat and bows his head. The other guy says, “Someone you knew?” The first guy hits his tee shot and says, “Yes. We would have been married 33 years next week.”
Kenny told me once that he’s golfed for the cycle in the 30 years he’s played: Rain, sunshine, snow and hail. Says when he sees lightning, he always holds up his 1-iron “because not even God can hit a 1-iron.”
Bada-bing!
Anyway, he told me a story this summer he swears is true. I have my doubts, but given the degree of obsession attributed to golfers, maybe he’s not putting me on.
He was in a foursome one day, when one player, Michael, had just gotten through hitting a long drive on the eighth hole. Michael took a big swallow from a Coke can that just happened to contain a bee. As he swallowed, the bee stung his throat on the way down.
Michael instantly began coughing violently, trying to expel the bee, but it already was making its way down.
“What do I do?” he asked.
“Are you allergic to bee stings?” Kenny asked.
“I don’t know,” Michael said.
“Are you swelling up?” another asked.
“I don’t think so,” Michael answered.
It was a gorgeous day. They’d played just seven holes. Kenny was putting great, so he said, “Let’s keep playing.”
They played and finished all 18 holes. By 17, though, Michael had swollen up significantly. Several times he thought he should quit playing in case he risked having a seizure, but he was playing well and even birdied No. 14, so he played on. He was still coughing, but he played on.
They thought about stopping at the clubhouse for a leisurely lunch, but Michael’s coughing had increased, so they decided to order sandwiches to go and drove him to the emergency room.
At the hospital, the doctor kept him under observation for several hours to make sure he had no toxicity. Kenny had driven Michael and Will, one of the others, to the hospital. Michael, seeing that he would be delayed for some time, offered to let them off the hook and said he could take a cab back home.
No, Kenny said, they’d drive him back. But they had three hours to kill. What did they do? They left Michael in the ER, drove back to the course and got in another 18 before dark.
Kenny always said that was one reason for his divorce. Once he got home, he told his wife about it, whereupon she harangued him for not taking Michael immediately to the hospital.
“We couldn’t,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because there wasn’t a hospital between No. 8 and No. 9.”
She never let him forget it.
Come to think of it, Kenny tells another joke ad nauseum:
A golfer had just finished a horrible round and was just about to climb into his car when a police officer stopped him.
“Did you tee off on the 16th hole a while ago?” the officer asked.
“Yes,” the golfer said.
“Did you hook the ball so that it went over the trees and off the course?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” the officer said. “Your ball crashed through a driver’s windshield. The car went out of control and bashed into a fire truck. The fire truck couldn’t make it to a fire and the building burned down. What are you going to do about it?”
The golfer thought it over.
“I think I’ll close my stance a little bit, tighten my grip and lower my right thumb.”
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