I'm Pretty Sure This Is Scotland's Fault ... They Invented The Stupid Game, After All.

As I am currently just past the midpoint of my 9th decade on this earth, I am becoming ever more aware of my pathetic frailty. Where once I could battle the cobblestones of Paris-Roubaix on a brisk spring day and carouse with French lasses throughout the night, drinking absinthe from various body concavities, today I am near tears with every movement, thanks to the unnatural twisting and bodily distortions required by the game of golf.

I thought I had prepared properly – I stayed up well past midnight Saturday and long into the morning strategizing, using the time-tested method of trying to drink all of the beer that the Anheuser-Busch Brewing Company had produced and annoying strangers with senseless banter. Regrettably, while such activities can be advantageous for the younger crowd (and John Daly), a man of my advanced years does not fare so well.

But golf we did, a foursome quite comical, as well as odoriferous, I’m sure, as my fellow players also subscribe to these commonly accepted means of golf-eve preparation, as well as the traditional 10 am practice-green Bud Light Tall Boy. Between the ubiquitous four-putts and our tendency to use the fairways adjacent to the particular one we were actually playing, I’m sure it was quite a spectacle – quite a spectacle, indeed.

It probably didn’t help matters that later in the day, I helped move an armoire that weighed in excess of 3000 lbs (13,636 decagrams) and was the size of Rhode Island (but, you know, 3-dimensional). Luckily, the two girls that I was helping were quite a bit stronger than I am, so we were able to accomplish the maneuvers without serious damage.

To the armoire, at least.

And so I sit, whimpering at my desk, arms aching, searing pain shooting through my body with each keystroke, and I think back to last week, when an excursion to the bowling alley, requiring similarly bizarre gyrations for which the human body is not intended, produced a nearly identical result. It's almost as if I haven't the capacity for learning.

The cobblestones of Paris-Roubaix seem like heaven in comparison.