May 17 - The Range
After not writing every single day, picking one ‘slice’ out of an entire month (…I haven’t been Tuesday-consistent) feels like a steep ask. There are so many excuses. How am I supposed to choose? Too much happened! I’m out of practice!
Anyways.
I showed up to the golf course near my apartment and gave myself a pat on the back for my timing. 30 minutes before my tee time. The perfect amount for a few practice chip shots. As is the case with many great plans, this one quickly went awry.
‘Yeahhhh, this is for the Kennedy course.’ The pro told me, handing me back my phone.
‘Well, shoot. Do you have any openings here?’
He gave me a sad shake of the head. ‘No, we’re totally booked until 6:15.’ …It was 4pm. ‘But I can put you on the waitlist and give you a call if anything opens up.’
‘That’d be great. I’ll take a bucket of balls and hang out.’
He took down my info and handed me a large bucket of balls with a wink and an ‘it’s on the house’… It isn’t often, but sometimes it does pay to be a young woman in the golf world.
After hitting about twenty balls, I was slightly distracted (and, admittedly, slightly annoyed) by the incredibly chatty guys behind me. I could tell from their conversation that they were about my age and didn’t have much to talk about other than where they thought the best bars to hit on girls would be for that Saturday night. My range-mate on my other side was lefty, so he was forced to face both me and the guys behind me, and also about my age, but had his noise-canceling headphones in. I was kicking myself for having forgotten mine. Decidedly done with my irons for the time being, I switched out for my driver and proceeded to almost clock a middle-school-aged boy in my back swing.
‘Oh, shoot, so sorry about that,’ he muttered, barely loud enough for me to hear him. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, I was just wondering… Do you think I could try?’
The guys around me all stopped swinging to watch the interaction.
‘Um, sure,’ I said. ‘Here, take a tee. You’ll want it.’
The kid took my driver, tee’d the ball up to the moon, set up his stance (it was pretty immediately clear that this kid was not a golfer, but I stopped myself from offering any pointers), and then walked back to me, handing me the driver. ‘Never mind, I don’t want to do it anymore.’ He ran back to his friend who was standing about 20 yards back laughing into his hands.
‘Well, that was definitely a dare.’ The guy in front of me said, one airpod out and laughing. I rolled my eyes. ‘No kidding.’
‘I wonder why he chose you.’ I turned around to see if the guy behind me was being sarcastic. It was pretty obvious why the kid chose me. I’ll give you one hint: my chromosomes.
‘Oh, yeah, I wonder. Definitely isn’t because I’m the only one here in a skirt.’ I responded. The guy in front of me let out another chuckle as the two frat bros looked at each other in utter disbelief. I hadn’t meant it to come out as sassy as it did, but I was absolutely stunned at the lack of awareness. These two dudes had to be blind. There were at least 40 people at the range and maybe 4 of them were women. 1 of those 4 was under the age of 40. Me.
Finally one of them broke the awkward tension as I turned my attention back to my pile of range balls. ‘Oh, haha, yeah probably.’
Another 20-ish balls later, the middle school kid came jogging back. ‘I’m ready now. Can I try again?’
I handed him my club.
He tee’d up the ball, gave a nervous backwards glance to his companion, and whacked it. When he turned around, his grin stretched from ear to ear. I turned around to catch his friend throw up a fist pump. ‘Thanks, miss,’ He mumbled, handing my club back to me and sprinting back to his waiting buddy.
No comments this time from the peanut gallery behind me. But the guy in front took out his airpod to say, ‘That time it wasn’t because of your skirt. It was because you were nice.’
