Fore!

Things I wonder about:

I don't play golf, because that windmill always drove me crazy and on the last hole, the ball always went down this big gopher hole and I didn't get it back. But every time I turn our TV on to channel 3, it's the Golf Channel, and as likely as not, some golfer is missing a five-foot putt. Is this the First-Time Amateur Golf Channel?

And yes, I do have a thing about golf. I wonder how a baseball player is ok standing there 60'6" away from a guy on a hill who is going to throw a small white ball at him at a speed of 80-100 mph while 30,000 people scream their lungs out and cameras are trained on the action at the mound and at the plate and lightbulbs are flashing and the crowd is eddying and Eddie is crowding - while over on channel 3, a man dressed to go to TGIFridays right after this putt is leaning over the ball, which rests 2 feet from the cup, and he studies the lie of the land and consults topographic charts and his caddy brings out an anemometer to check the windspeed and then - at long last! eventually! the great man leans over with his putter in his hand (!) and the crowd is hushed! silence reigns! all coughing suppressed, no sneezing, only the very shallowest of breaths are inhaled and then, when a stillness unseen since that Friday at Appomattox descends upon the multitudes, the golfer taps the ball and it veers off six inches from the cup.

I would also like to know why, with the exception of the greatest meteorologist in the world, so many people delivering the weather to us on TV talk about the high "tempacher" for tomorrow. It doesn't take that much longer to say tem-per-ature.

And let's slow down when we come to talk about upper resp-ir-atory infections, too. All winter long, even on commercials, I have heard people talking about problems of the "respitory" system.

And, in case this question comes up on the 2010 Census, my favorite tv commercial is still the one where the guy drops his Cialis and then two seconds later his kids drop off the grandkids for the weekend. In real life, you know he would have hidden in the garage and faked like no one was home.

Last November, I was in line at the polls for so long before I got to the voting booth, I was afraid I was going to have to call my doctor and report that I had experienced an election lasting over four hours. I live for such moments.