It’s getting more difficult to keep up with this daily journal when time is moving faster than the
speed of light these days. I got up early again this AM to try and get some bible reading in before leaving
for golf. I left around 8:45 AM and headed to Brooksville CC. I got there early enough to hit a large
bucket of balls. I saw Pat getting out of his truck and invited him to share my bucket of balls. We met on
the driving range and proceeded to hit some balls.
After picking up Don and practicing some chipping on the chipping green, I headed over to the
putting green where Pete and Pat were already practicing. There were a rather large number of groups
that were ahead of us and we all anticipated that it would be a long day ahead. Last week we played
behind this, what we believed was, a husband and wife couple. They started out on the first hole hitting
more than one ball and driving all over the place, leaving the cart in the middle of the fairway and
walking aimlessly around the fairway. Everyone was getting rather frustrated with them, but they finally
got going and we continued to tee off. The whole day we were waiting for this couple for one reason or
another. The couple would wait till the group ahead of them would get off the green before hitting their
second shots, which usually went about 30 yards in one direction or another. Tensions started to build
on the 12 th hole, which if you hit a spectacular shot, you could reach the green. The two guys, Pete and
Pat usually lay up on this hole and hit the fairway to the left. Pete hit his drive and we heard the lady say
“WERE STILL HERE!” Pete apologized, then got in the cart and drove down to the ladies tee to see where
this couple was. They were nowhere in sight, so Pete and Pat proceeded to tee off. Don was next and he
hit an unbelievable drive that was headed towards the green. He yelled “Foooor Green” after he knew it
was headed to the green. I shanked my drive off into the woods. Anyway, this lady came driving up in
her cart and started complaining about the drive that Don hit. I asked if his drive hit the green, and the
lady said “Yea it almost hit me!”. We were like, whatever, Don yelled four, so to us it wasn’t that big a
deal.
The very next hole is a rather difficult driving hole. You’re hitting down into a canyon and it has
to be almost a perfectly strait drive to get it into the fairway. Well the couple ahead of us was again dilly
dallying and this was after they hit their second shots, so they were presumably out of range. Everyone
hit their drives and no one got close to them. The wind was in our face, so no one believed that I could
reach the sand trap, let alone where these people were. Well of course I hit the longest drive of my life
and it landed next to their cart. I almost outdrove the bunker! A spectacular shot of course. Well the
husband was walking up to the green, however the wife (or girlfriend whatever) was sitting in her cart
pointing at my golf ball and telling me to “Come Here” like some sort of school teacher who wanted to
scold me. The ball that I hit simply rolled up to their cart and they were never in any physical danger of
getting hit. Well she wouldn’t let it go and continued to stand there demanding that I come there. I
basically lost it and drove up there yelling at her to get moving. Of course she didn’t and so things
started to get heated. She started to get out her phone and wanted to take pictures of us. I tried to get
her phone away from her and she started driving away, then she’d stop and try again to take pictures of
me, so I tried to unlatch her golf bag because I was going to throw it into the woods. She finally relented
and drove up the hill to the next hole. The guys behind us congratulated us for finally getting them to
move and wished we’d done that on the second hole.
Well we finally got to the 18 th green and as I was starting to putt, I heard a golf cart behind me
pull up. It was this really nice golf course marshal who politely asked if we got into an altercation with
this lady. We stated our case, and I asked if I could go and apologize to this women. He said that would be nice, so I walked to the cart and gave a remorseful apology, which she accepted. Then she said
something that blew everyone away. She said to me “You should wear a bullet proof vest because
people in Florida have guns and are crazy”. I assumed that she made a threat to me, so I simply got into
my cart and started to drive away. Don was livid and so were the others in our group. The marshal was
completely dumbfounded and they drove away. Later we went to the new restaurant upstairs, as the
guys were going to buy me lunch, and the marshal came up to apologize for her comment and behavior.
He stated that he had never experienced anything like that in his life and wanted to buy us a beer on our
next outing. Well obviously that wasn’t going to happen for me, but I told him to give my beer to my
group.
At that moment I realized that I needed an anger management class and am now looking
forward to taking the class at the institution. I need to find out what triggers my anger and gets me so
frustrated that I do things that are not germane to my being. I know where this anger stems from as my
father used to just go off on us kids. He would just snap and start hitting us, sometimes for a good
reason, but sometimes he was frustrated with the noise we were making. Like one time we were all
driving somewhere and it was late at night. The road was dark and the oncoming traffic lights were
bothering my father. My sisters were in the back seat giggling as usual about who knows what, and I
remember saying to my father, “what if you looked at the white line on the right to divert your eyes
from the oncoming lights?” or something to that idea. The next thing I know is he pulled the car off the
road, turned around and hit everyone in the back seat with his hand across all of our faces. I’m pretty
sure he said something like “Shut the hell up, all of you!” and then got back on the highway. The car was
silent the rest of the way home, or wherever we were going. I don’t know why I remember this event,
other than it may have been somewhat been a traumatic experience as a child not knowing what you
did to deserve that action. It must have rubbed off on me and maybe that’s the crux of the problem.
After golf, I came home and immediately got into the car with Carlos, my next door neighbor. JR
wanted the three of us to go to Longhorn’s steakhouse for dinner at 4:30. I knew I was going to dinner
that evening, so I only ate a hotdog at the clubhouse. I got home at exactly 4:30, and Carlos was waiting
outside for me at the curb. I got in and we took off to the restaurant to meet up with JR. It was a nice
dinner, the two of them both ordered hamburgers, while I ate a ribeye steak. They also order appetizers
and we ate well. My steak was very tough and I probably should have returned it, but I was embarrassed
enough and settled for a take home box to put the rawhide in.
After dinner, I came home and walked Buggsie with my wife around the block. We met our
neighbor, Mike who’s a really nice guy that has all the toys a man could want. I decided to tell him about
my situation, and he was devastated. He couldn’t believe that this is happening to me and told Ihla that
if she needed anything at all to please ask for him and his wife’s help.
Mom called just after I had told Mike about my incarceration, and we talked for a bit while we
walked around the block. She just finished a card game and had lots to talk about for some reason. She
seemed in good spirits as she finally won a card game. We said our goodbye’s and we finished our walk
around the block.
After our walk, I started to write my book report on Vicktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for
Meaning. I got quite a bit done and by 10:00 PM I was tired. I decided to watch a little TV before heading
to bed, which only took less than 30 minutes for me to start falling asleep. I fell asleep within a few minutes, but ended up waking up at 1:00 AM. I took some Melatonin to try and get back to sleep. It took
me about an hour to fall back asleep.
