This is a story from yesterday. Maybe it fits here.
I had gone to play a new course. Never mind where. The sun is shining while I perform the delicate dance of picking out & putting back all the discs* that will be my arsenal at this never-played-before course.
*Oh, I would not like to know how many times I have agonized over bagging a disc only to not throw it that day.
Beside the first tee, a lively cricket match is being played in crisp white uniforms. In between shots, I watch the cricketeers - the whiteness of their uniforms is mesmerizing, like Cuba Gooding, Jr.'s smile in the blockbuster smash hit Snow Dogs. A guy with one disc and his dog get out to play & break the spell. I am annoyed because I now must fast walk to collect the rest of my scattered practice tee shots & finish the first hole.
After a few holes, thunder begins to bounce & roll across the hemisphere. The guy and his dog and his disc head home.
I catch up to a couple guys searching for a misplaced disc and decide it's high time to throw on my crumpled-up rain jacket & dig out my bag's rain-fly while I wait. I have a good shot and finish the hole quickly. I try to beat down the small unhappiness I feel waiting again on the next tee pad & watching them play army golf down the wooded fairway.
I find them waiting for me at the next tee. They have on shorts & t-shirts while I'm looking pretty water resistant at this point, and all three of us are wearing well-loved ballcaps. One guy holds a couple discs and the other guy has one of those $15 starter satchel bags from Innova or Dynamic. They are friendly and in good spirits and enjoin me to play through. We small talk about the weather but the talk does not feel so small.
Me: You think the rain'll hold off?
Guy 1: Hope so! Man, you got the stuff, though.
Guy 2 (laughing): Jacket would have been good.
They are genuinely excited to watch my Roc fly down the fairway through the woods - "That's the way you do it!" - but I'm not very happy with the shot. I thank them & keep going.
Soon, it starts raining - and by raining, I mean the good Lord up and let the bottom out. My grandpa would have called it a real gully washer. I take shelter under some trees with thick ivy-covered trunks off to the side of the green on hole #8 or #9, well across the cricket pitch from the parking lot & the shelter of my car. I bust out the cheap travel umbrella that I keep in a seldom used pocket of my bag.
So there I was: rain jacket, bag fly, umbrella, sheltering beneath the trees and their ivy coats, listening to the rain fall, and watching the ground rivulets grow and blossom into little streams. Maybe twenty minutes passes.
Then! in whizzes a high speed driver (it's a short hole), and here come the two guys I had passed earlier. They are drenched. Really. I mean Luca-Brasi-sleeps-with-the-fishes-soaked. They are smiling & making jokes about their shots. Guy 2 hits a 50 footer for birdie. I celebrate with him. He says it part-way makes up for all his bad shots before. I say I know the feeling. They wish me a real nice rest of the day. I watch them play on. Nobody mentions the rain.
I wait a few more minutes before deciding to head back to my car to sign the ole scorecard. I zig zag across the abandoned pitch trying to avoid stepping in all the higher-than-the-waterproof-part-of-my-shoes pools of water. I pass some leftover cricket players huddled beneath a pavilion in now sodden white linens. They are calling it, too.
It rained seriously for another few hours after I left, and I felt a small bit of satisfaction in my decision to run home - you know, at least the sun didn't burst out 15 minutes after I left, right? But I keep thinking about the two players that I had played through and that then had played through me. Why did I put on the rain gear to go home? Why did they keep playing?
I know I'll be back to finish the course, but I can't shake the feeling that I've forgotten something.
