Nightmare Golf

The last few days have been a bit of a loss to my real world - assuming anyone would characterize my strange existence as happening in a real world.  I came down with some very debilitating bug shortly after an Easter dinner.  No connection, I presume.  But by late afternoon, I was slipping into a state of chills and fever, sneaking away from the other guests and hosts at the auspicious venue, and stretching out across the guest bed.  That happened to be near the guest bathroom, where I was concerned my meal was going to end up shortly, returning by the same path it had taken an hour or two earlier.

And to my friend Al, who commented on my previous post, allow me to say I did NOT enjoy that scotch as you encouraged me to do.  The fact that I was sipping a fine after dinner drink and could not enjoy the taste was a clue that something was not quite right in my interior.  My downhill slide began sometime around half-way through the final round of The Masters golf tournament which all of us at that gathering watched with delight.  Witnessing Bubba Watson's tearful release of tournament tension was about the last thing I recall of the day. 

To emphasize this connection to golf in general (and you know by now, I'm something of a nut for the game), I had just spent a week with our children who came to hang out at our home on the golf course.  We played well over 100 holes of golf during that week!  When my son is here with me enjoying the typical warmth of southern California, he feels enfranchised and obligated to spend all the time he can on the course because it's just the thing to do!  He might manage to play on another course only once or twice before he's back here in three to four months, so he backlogs his rounds of golf whenever he's here.  Now my six-year-old grandson is becoming almost as committed.  So I did play a lot of golf, having to always be out there with them to allow them to play in my senior community.  Naturally, I loved it all.

The foregoing info will come into play here shortly.  Sleep on Sunday night was practically impossible.  All my bones seemed to want to reject each other and depart my body in protest.  But if my estimate of ten minutes as my longest single time spent in any one position is correct, then my nightmare was amazingly resilient and determined.  It seemed I had slept almost not at all, yet it equally seemed that I dreamed for hours - that is, endured the nightmare for hours.  It would seem the nightmare was so determined, it renewed itself after a number of semi-wakeful stretches in which I was forced to painfully turn my body to a new, still uncomfortable, position.

And the nightmare, unbelievably, had me trudging a golf course!  I use the word trudging pointedly because walking was more like dragging myself along through thick mud - an account I've heard others recite in trying to express the feel of a nightmare.  But the course I was playing didn't look muddy or awful in anyway; it looked like a beautiful golf course.  It wasn't Augusta National, for some reason, but a fine course.  I simply was hampered in my ability to play it properly.  Apparently I was required (by some impish golf-gods conspiring with nightmare gremlins) to go ahead of my son's round on the course, and until I could conquer a hole in some way, he would not be able to do well at all.  The problems were two-fold essentially.  One; as I said, it was as though I had to trudge through mud even though the course didn't show up as muddy, and two; the holes I had to hit were not really holes and not even on actual greens.  As best I can describe them, they were rubber-like objects tossed on the ground at odd locations - I had to find them - and they looked more like enlargements of those crazy shaped rubber-bands of many colors that youngsters collect on their wrists.  After each time I was able to putt the ball into the crazy band, I was told I had to pick up the rubber item and put it on my ankle, stretching it over my shoe.  These then gathered in number and hampered me still more as I continued slogging through the course.

My son following along with the regular play, typical greens and holes, and having a caddy, appeared to be playing well though I could barely catch a glimpse of him at some of the greens while I was on the succeeding tee boxes.  At some of these moments, he gave me a thumbs-up gesture.  Much appreciated!

I'm sure a dream analyzer could come up with all kinds of psychological meaning out of all this, but to me it meant one thing only: I was sick!  My supposition is that the brain is stuffed with so much info along with flotsam and jetsam that given a chance, it will push out some of that crud while other systems are down.

Congrats to Bubba and my son for great rounds of golf!