FORE!

I'd like to post photos. I really would. But have you seen my battery charger? No? Well, that makes two of us.

It's probably at home. But there was the time we moved everything for John's Indiana Jones birthday party, and there was the time we moved everything to "dog-proof" the house for a weekend while we were gone (ha!), and there was the time...

I cannot for the life of me figure out where I put it. My brother's convinced the dogs ate it. But my brother also memorizes long, random strings of numbers for fun, like other people's library card numbers, so, you know.

YOU know.

I wonder if he knows mine? Hey CIA, my brother would be great in your code room or something. Look him up.

And what is WITH this disc golf craze?

John has been playing disc golf every spare moment he has since about May. I think he was playing disc golf in his sleep last night. His arms kept jerking. When I can't find him, I put my hands on my hips and glare and head for the spare room, where he's reading disc golf articles online and watching disc golf instructional videos. He got really down the other day because the best of the best world professionals have different techniques.

"It's okay," I tried to assure him. "You just pick the one that works for you. Like I try several different recipes of one dish, then make the one I like the best." I don't think that example was a strong rhetorical move, but I felt, deep, down in my heart, that it was. Like those Heaven's Gate people felt they should join the Hale-Bopp comet.

I know what you're thinking. A) where did that comet go, anyway? It just swings by for dinner and then jets? and B) what is disc golf?

Well, disc golf uses frisbee-like discs. The player walks around a course, like golf, throwing his or her disc as many times as it takes to get to the "hole" which is a basket. So there are par three "holes" (baskets) etc. They even have different discs of different weights for "putting" and "driving." I use my all-purpose all in one disc because I don't feel like lugging around a bag of different discs, which John does. Also I like my disc. It's got swirly colors.

Here are some old-school audio-visual aids:

A man in the forest throwing his disc towards the basket. Some courses are out in the open. Others are nefarious, inhabited by ewoks, and I'm pretty sure, Shelob.

This is a disc golf bag with discs. It's about the size of a diaper bag. I haven't seen caddies so far. It's only a matter of time.

This is a flight chart. John likes to spend time improving his technique, because some discs naturally angle one direction or the other at the end of their flight. The trick, then, is to know which way your disc will angle naturally, and which way it will veer if you throw it hard enough. Some discs will veer to the left if you throw them hard enough even if they naturally veer to the right. But throwing isn't all. Oh no. There's footwork too.

Unfortunately, there are some spin-off products as well, like this classy charmer: because nothing says "I love you" like a disc golf basket necklace.

There are also leagues. Yes. Of course John joined one. He joined one that plays at the scary dark wooded forest course, where one can routinely spot elves, giant spiders, and hopefully, but not yet, corpses. It has always been a secret dream of mine to stumble upon a dead body, solve the murder, and become a detective. One time I thought I found a skull in my flowerbed. It turned out to be a rock.

I'm glad John joined a league. I encouraged him to find players he could compete with. Because right now, my throw is about a third as far as one of his "bad" ones. The skill difference doesn't bother me at all unless he gets discouraged about how he's doing. Then I sensitively point out that he's taken one throw but I've taken four to catch up to him.

Have I just been missing the boat for all these years? Or are disc golf courses a relatively new fixture of community recreation? I wouldn't know, my adolescence was much more about reading than athletics. No, nooo, of course I was cool.

Cool like a nice long novel. Cool like a spelling bee. Cool like a history buff.

Yep. Just call me The Fonz of church history.