Golf Carts

It’s a good time to be alive, and that’s because I’ve been convinced to buy a golf cart. I am thrilled. My entire family, with straight faces and without irony, have told me - repeatedly - that we need to make this purchase.

Before continuing, I think it’s relevant to mention a few things.

First off, none of us golf. We’ve been golfing, of course, but we do not golf, and we do not live on a golf course. We do not live in an airport. We do not have a pressing need to get from one tarmac to another to catch a flight during most days of the week. Finally, none of us have any major leg issues that inhibit our mobility. We’re fine. We can all walk without assistance and we’re in relatively good health.

No, the reason we need a golf cart is really quite simple and it’s so we can go trick-or-treating. This realization dawned on us recently, when we were, of course, trick-or-treating, and it became evident we were the only group of idiots walking up and down the road without a golf cart.

Now, the golf cart situation in our neighborhood has been on the upswing the last few years and we have had very casual conversations about getting one. This Halloween, though, was a real eye opener, because there were just so many. The golf carts would drive down the road, the kids would putter up to houses, get back in, and drive away to the next green. I mean house.

While all this was going on, however, our poor children had to walk the entire distance while my wife and I just stood there without a clue like Ma and Pa Ingalls. Needless to say it was very embarrassing and we have sworn this will never happen again.

This is a major purchase, of course, but I have never been opposed to buying a golf cart in principle. They look like fun and would be a great way to teach our kids how to run yellow lights. The problem has always been we have nowhere to actually put it. Our house blueprints say we have a two car garage but it's mostly just a storage unit for good intentions and broken dreams. It’s full of bicycles, basketballs, lawn chairs, softballs, baseballs, baseball cleats, soccer cleats, various netting -  an entire collapsible swimming pool -  just so many, many things, and some of them don’t even make sense.

Take our Frisbee collection, for example. We have thirteen. Why? How? We only have ten hands. Are we circus performers? Why do we have thirteen Frisbees? I could go on but you get my point. Occasionally I’ll get ambitious and straighten the place up and even take before and after pictures like I’m starting a health cleanse. After a few hours we can get our van into the garage. It’s a wild moment and always the apex of my week.

Returning to the golf cart, though, before we make this purchase we will need a place to park it. We technically do have a shed for our lawn mower but it needs to be condemned and replaced with a bigger shed, one that can reasonably hold the potential golf cart and a bunch of other stuff. Ideally this newer, bigger shed would be built on top of actual concrete. That would be tremendous. The problem with this, of course, is that someone will need to be hired to pour the concrete and then to build the shed on top. (I sometimes struggle to pour a bowl of milk in the morning, so it’s best to leave these things to the experts.)

            Regardless, now that we’ve been convinced the vehicle is less a luxury and more a need, it’s time to get the golf ball rolling, so to speak. In the meantime, the good steward in me knows I should at least start making space. Let me know if you need a Frisbee.