It is 4:50 AM and I have a cold which hasn’t let me get a good nights sleep. I had just gotten over a fever when *someone* in the house got a pretty nasty cough which has also infected me. Perhaps I could have gotten over it by now if I had rested but there was a golf tournament on Monday and I went to karate yesterday. In doing so I think I let this cold really take hold.
The golf tournament was at Lake Merced Country Club and the purpose was to support a very well known and wonderful charity for children. The entry fee was steep at $500 per person and so most of the participants were from corporations who paid the bill. I was extremely shocked though as the manners and behavior of many participants were absolutely atrocious. One would think these guys would be much better behaved since it was to support a charity but that wasn’t the case.
There was a lot of alcohol which was most likely a major factor but in all truthfulness I think more than a few of them were simply entitled dickheads. The worst incident involved me directly. The tournament was a shotgun start and we began on hole #4. When we got to #9 we made the mistake of proceeding to hole #1 instead of going to #10. There were also no hole number signs since it is a private club and not needed for members. When we realized our mistake after completing #3 we went to #10 and found it open. However, halfway through the hole the group behind us drove up and asked if we were on the right hole. We explained our mistake and he drove off.
Well, two holes later one in their foursome came up to the woman in our group and began asking aggressive questions as to how exactly we made the mistake. I intervened and he said “So you fucked up on the front and now you’re fucking up on the back?” Needless to say his tone continued to be aggressive as I just stood there calmly responding until he walked away. That was the first time in my adult life I’ve had a situation like that and am really proud of myself as I kept completely cool and wasn’t intimidated or scared in the least. This was a children’s charity event, it was a work event and the woman with us was a top customer and any physical altercation would involve the police. I offered to let him play through, but he didn’t take me up on it (his golf game was atrocious).
I did keep my cool but if this wasn’t work and a children’s event I wouldn’t have let a bully get away with something like that. I still don’t condone violence but if he got physical it might have felt good to break his arm.
In addition, he was also playing an extremely vulgar song pretty loudly from his cart using a bluetooth speaker. I’m still baffled about how a seemingly grown man can behave in such a way. I would imagine he is also abusive to family, most likely divorced and just a bad person on the overall. In fact, he is in the top five of the worst adults I’ve ever met!
Anyway, everyone around us, his teammates, the vendors at the hole and of course my teammates were pretty shocked at his behavior. We didn’t encounter them too closely as our golf game was much better than theirs. Then a few holes later one of the guys tried to make conversation with me by asking me about my hat. I’m assuming this was the ‘guy way’ to sort of apologize. He really didn’t expect my answer which was “San Fransokyo from Big Hero 6.” In fact he was speechless. I probably just should have said ‘Vintage 1982 Bengals,’ to which he probably would have smiled and nodded.
But that wasn’t all in regards to bad behavior. One group hit a ball washer with their cart and kicked off the course. Then there was the guy at the bar afterwards; I went to get a beer and struck up a conversation with the guy next to me only to abruptly end the conversation with a ‘Have a good day,’ after realizing he was completely plastered. The same guy didn’t make it through dinner as he passed out on a chair in the corner.
As for Lake Merced Country club, that place just smells like money. In the guys locker room – which is enormous – they had profiles of a few new people on a ‘trial membership,’ which I read. Of course they were all partners in law firms, Directors, and CEOs. In one profile of a top lawyer it said that his son was on the high school golf team and so golfing was something they could do together and both enjoy. I thought about how much this lawyer must work to get money to be able to afford an exclusive club in order to spend a few hours with his son on the weekend. Was spending so many hours at the office worth it in order to be able to afford exclusive luxury?
For me, this was a world in which I’d never fit. In fact I don’t think I’ve every been a ‘clubbable guy.’ The only time I was in some sort of club was the frat and I never really fit the mold and did my own thing which upset a few of the hardcore frat guys. I never wore Birkenstocks, never wore the letters and I even forgot the password to the super secret meeting that I only attended once. In fact, I wasn’t even around much since I spent a lot of time studying overseas which was by far one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Moving on to more bad behavior this week, I also noticed that in the school parking lot there is one lady who always parks in the handicapped parking lot and although she has a handicapped placard she is obviously not handicapped. We always get to school a bit early as traffic could cause us to be late and to beat the last minute rush when all the students seem to arrive in the last five minutes. Since we have some time to kill we sit in the car for a few minutes and talk. Well, even though there are regular parking spots open this woman parks in the handicapped and can walk just as normally as anyone. In fact, she’ll often walk at a brisk pace about 10 minutes away to go get coffee!
Again, I really do not understand how a fully grown adult could behave like this. Handicapped spots are for people that are actually handicapped and would have trouble going long distances from the car to the front door of the building; it is quite obvious this woman has no trouble at all.
I often write about how I imagined as a child that adults had all the answers and always behaved properly, but how extremely disappointed I am in realizing, as an adult myself, that a very large percentage of adults are an absolute mess. Many of them seemingly haven’t matured even a little beyond high school. The only difference between the mental state of the adult and a high schooler is that the adult has more life experience and that experience is a number of failures.
Anyway, due to a cold, interactions with terrible ‘adults,’ and stress from work it hasn’t been a great week. It is hard to believe we’re halfway to Halloween already and I’m not even slightly in the holiday mood yet. I’m hoping this cold goes away soon and I can get into more of a holiday mindset.
