Stop the Presses column by Chris Graham
It hurts to type.
That’s how sore I am, ladies and germs.
Ar-r-r-rgh.
It seemed like a good idea, on paper.
Go out and hit an extra-large bucket of golf balls at the driving range.
Oh yeah.
Wonderful.
I hadn’t swung a clubhead back in five or six months – but oh well.
It would be good exercise
, I told myself.
Uh-huh.
It sure was.
I blasted shot after shot – past the 250-yard sign out in the middle of the expansive fairway, taking a few out to the cornfield another 50 yards or so past the sign.
Not bad for a 20, eh?
Anyway …
I did this over and over and over for an hour – taking the clubhead back behind my head so that I could see it in my rearview, then looping back through with power and ferocity before finishing my backswing again with the club wrapped back around the other side of my head.
I repeated this motion, oh, about 250 times – 125 times actually hitting the ball, 125 more (probably higher) on practice swings.
Which is the main reason why it’s right now taking me so long to get the words from my head through my fingers and onto the computer screen.
Because my fingers hurt.
The hair on my fingers hurt.
The hair on my little toes hurt.
Parts of my body that aren’t even actually here yet (but are coming on slowly but surely with age and gravity and other co-conspirators about to do a number on me as I get further and further into my 30s and then middle age) …
They hurt.
I hurt when I sit down, when I stand up, when I lay in bed, when I walk the dog.
And it’s not like I don’t exercise – and that I’m pretty much a blubbergut who lays around the house watching “Jeopardy” and eating Cheetos every danged night.
I (sniff!) work out – lifting weights, doing my own version of the “8-Minute Abs” routine (I can never get it done in under 12 minutes, which is good, I guess, if I were interested in trying to find something to market … “12-Minute Abs … For Those Who Want 50-Percent More Out Of Their Ab Workout.”
I even do this boxing thing (I call it Chris-Bo) in which I stand in front of my sliding-glass door at night (for the mirror effect) and box the air and the glass in back-to-back-to-back 10-minute rounds.
(Which, meanwhile, is also a good way to get the neighbors to think twice about dropping in unannounced for tea and lively discussion on the war. With the crazy guy who punches the mirror? Um, honey, no. Let’s go visit the guy with 20 cats instead. Oh, he’s the same guy. Great.)
Lesson learned – golf is definitely not one of those aristocratic sports in which the rich folks pay somebody else to sweat for them.
Note to self: I gotta get me one of those.
(The people. Who sweat for you.)
(Published 03-10-03)
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