While I am not surprised by how most of my summer has transpired (like, the fact that I haven't gotten ANYTHING on my to-do list done, and I only have two weeks left), I am absolutely shocked by one occurrence, something I could never in my entire life have predicted:

I've taken up golf.

My entire adult life, I have subscribed to the opinion of the late George Carlin:

"Did you ever watch golf on TV? It's like watching flies fuck. I get more excited picking out socks. Think of the brains that it takes to play golf: hitting a ball with a crooked stick, and then...walking after it. And then, hitting it again! I say, 'Pick it up, asshole, you're lucky you found it. Put it in your pocket and go the fuck home, will ya?'"

I've had little contact with golf of the non-miniature variety during my life. My dad played occasionally when I was a kid. He owned his own clubs, but it wasn't a particularly frequent pasttime; I really can't remember any specific golf outings of his, or what caliber player he was. In fact, my only specific memory was when I was about seven or eight and my father decided to teach my brother and me to play.

Now, I suspect the plan was really to teach my brother the finer points of the game, as he is 3 1/2 years older than I am, but I tended to tag along when my brother wanted to do things, so I was probably included more to prevent hurt feelings and temper tantrums than for my edification.

Anyway, Dad was teaching us how to swing the clubs. The next event is shouded in mystery, and the truth may never be fully clear, but ultimately the result was my solid thwacking of my brother's head with an iron. Many questions have been asked about the intent of said thwacking: was my brother a victim of an accidental backswing or follow-through, or were there darker forces at work? I don't take well to criticism, so it's possible that assistance or critiques being offered were not taken in a positive light by me. In any case, my illustrious golfing career was over. The clubs were taken away, and suggestions were made that perhaps golf was not in my future.

And golf never entered my mind again, at least not for about 20 years. Meanwhile, my dad continued to play occasionally (probably not more than once or twice per year), and somewhere along the line my brother picked up enough of the game to get his own set of clubs and hit the driving range at lunchtimes or the links on a Saturday with some of his buddies. As for me, I did not play, I did not consider playing, and except for the sports highlights on the nightly news I did not see golf at all.

Then, in 2005, my brother-in-law graduated from high school. A member of his high school's golf team, he expressed an interest in hitting the local golf course with his siblings as a graduation gift. My husband agreed, having golfed a few times growing up and having enjoyed it, and so my husband, his brother, their sister, and her husband set off for the course. I tagged along out of curiosity, having never watched anyone actually play the sport live. The first few holes I enjoyed watching everyone else (my brother-in-law of course is quite good; everyone else had a few good shots but more unpredictable than not), but then once we were out of sight of the clubhouse, my sister-in-law offered me the use of her clubs and let me play along on a few holes. I thought perhaps this might be the moment where I discovered my true talent, my natural ability. I've never felt naturally gifted at anything, really, so I thought maybe I was a hidden gem, a Tigress just waiting to be discovered.

Alas, I really wasn't. I doubt that I hit the ball more than once correctly. My skills were more suited to the putt-putt courses than the full-sized game. Oh well. When we made the turn back towards the clubhouse, I relinquished the clubs to my sister-in-law and returned to my position as spectator. I had fun, but felt no real draw to the sport. I had tried it, I had failed, and I was moving on.

However, golf did not go away. My husband expressed several times how much fun he had playing with his little brother. The opportunity presented itself a few more times here and there, and he enjoyed himself. Several of his friends in town play golf, some pretty good actually, and he thought that it might be fun to learn to play so he could golf with them. And he suggested I might learn to play too--neither of us would be likely to take it seriously, but it would be something to do together, and a form of exercise that might be more interesting than cruising on an elliptical machine at the gym. His grandfather gave him an old set of clubs he had used when he retired (old enough that, as my husband laughs, "The woods are really wood"). The clubs sat in our house, unused, but occasionally the topic would be brought up again.

Nothing actually happened until June of this year. My husband's cousin was getting married at a golf resort, and the guests were offered the opportunity to play a round the day of the wedding. My brother-in-law of course expressed an interest, as did my sister-in-law and her husband, and my mother-in-law. My husband decided he would play too, and looked expectantly at me. What the heck, I thought, it would just be family, no one played regularly, my brother-in-law would surely smoke us all and we'd have a good time doing it.

But I had a problem: no clubs. My husband had his aged set, some family members had their own they would bring and others had sets they could borrow. I had neither my own clubs nor any friends who golf. I was uncomfortable asking my husband to borrow clubs from any of his coworkers' or friends' wives (and to be truthful it seems few of the women golfed--I don't know if we'd have found a set in time).

So a discussion with my husband ensued. Was it possible we might be interested in taking up the sport, not seriously of course, but as a fun option on weekends when rivers weren't running? Would we play enough to make a purchase of clubs worthwhile? Would this be a sport we might actually do more than once or twice a summer?

We answered "Yes", and purchased a set of woman's clubs (driver, two woods, two hybrids, four irons, two wedges, putter, bag, head covers) on sale at Sports Authority for $150. I was appalled at this outlay of money for a sport that I really, honestly, had not shown any promise at (I'm not even a par golfer on the putt-putt course), but after looking at the prices of the mid-range and upper quality clubs, I was pretty sure we'd just gotten the deal of a lifetime.

After only enough time to hit the driving range once and play a short nine holes on our little municipal course, we drove to the wedding. The morning of the wedding we showed up at the pro shop at a little after 7 a.m. It hadn't really occured to me that only four people could play golf at a time, so we were separated from my brother- and mother-in-law. Our foursome consisted of me, my husband, my sister-in-law and her husband. This suited us pretty well; while we would have liked to have the whole family together, who really wants to get shown up by a 21-year-old kid? I was fine with the group, since no one had significantly more experience than I did, in the grand scheme of things.

Two things became apparent on the first hole: 1) we were reasonably well matched as a foursome, skill-wise, and 2) this was not going to be a quick game before lunch. We were informed by a course ranger that a maximum score of 10 strokes was all that was permitted for each hole (what this meant was if you hit the ball ten times and still weren't in the hole, move on; what we interpreted this as was we might hit the ball thirteen times but we're only going to write down 10 on the scorecard). After being driven off the course after the first hole by a thunderstorm (generally holding a metal stick in a field when there's lightning is not on the recommended list of healthy activities) we resumed play. While I did not possess the golfing experience that my family members did, none of us possessed any consistency: one hole might find us on the green in two, only to six-putt; the next hole might require four tee-shots before we got one that was remotely playable; and a third hole might result in five lost balls before we ever got to the green. And yet, every few holes, each of us would hit a real golf shot, one that went where it was supposed to go. Those shots spurred us on (despite course rangers harassing us for being so slow), and we finished the eighteen holes (in 5 1/2 hours, a full hour beyond the course's maximum pace).

When the scores were totalled, I was shocked, stunned, and rather absurdly pleased with myself to find that I did not come in last in our foursome. My husband was equally pleased to learn that he had the best score of the four of us. This success, we decided, and the fun we had doing it, was just what we needed to verify that our decision had been correct. The Rubicon had been crossed, so to speak; we were taking up golfing.

However, we both agreed that our hack-and-slice approach probably wouldn't make us happy for long, so we decided to seek professional help. We arranged a lesson with a local golf pro, who took us one evening to the back end of the driving range at our municipal course. We were both disappointed to learn that we would be starting off with the short irons (part of the glee in golf, especially for my husband, is unleashing a wicked drive off the tee), basically because they are the easiest to control. The pro had us each hit a few balls while he evaluated our swings.

Then he started giving advice. He helped with the grip, the positioning of the shoulders and feet, where to put the head, and a number of other tips. Then he told me to swing again. Suddenly, it was like everything clicked into place, as my husband put it. Pow! I hit the ball with my pitching wedge, and it traveled easily just as far as the farthest I had ever managed to hit it with my driver (yes, sadly, that was only about 50-75 yards). I swung it again. Pow! And again. Pow! This was fantastic!

[On a side note, I actually hit the ball better than my husband did that day. His swing difficulties, however, were largely attributable to the fact that his clubs were old, battered, and far too short for his 6'4" frame. A new set of clubs, specially lengthened, have solved many of his problems. But I enjoyed the superiority while it lasted.]

Wanting to show off our new abilities, we scheduled a golf round with a kayaking friend of ours. He claimed to be a poor golfer (which he may be, but he still beat us). We had a great time, but there were still many inconsistencies in our game. My biggest problem seemed to be my longer clubs--our coach had taught us to swing the short irons, and I couldn't seem to translate that great-feeling swing to my driver or woods. Also, my putting, once the strongest (ha ha) part of my game (all that mini-golf), seemed to fall apart. We needed another lesson.

Our second lesson came, and despite our pro's plan to work on lower numbered irons (or, in my case, my hybrids), we asked him if he would teach us to hit the drivers. He acquiesced, and we started hitting. Again, with just a few tips here and there, my swing was back. Pow! Pow! Pow! (I've decided that the best course of action may be for me to record his advice and play it in headphones while I play the course.)

We played another round of golf with our friend this past weekend, and he was dismayed to see our improvement (I actually parred two holes, and my husband was only four strokes behind our friend at the end of 18). We're still wildly inconsistent, but so are the other people we've played with. Our friend has been playing since he was a kid; we've been playing for a month.

We have another lesson on Wednesday. I think we're going to ask if we can work on chipping and putting, as those have been weak spots for both of us.

So far I have resisted the urge to start replacing all my clubs with fancier ones (although I must admit, I have replaced the putter that came with my set with a novelty putter in the shape of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, and yes, I know that makes me a complete geek), but I'm sure the time will come. Already the shiny, high tech sticks are singing a siren call every time I enter a sporting goods store. I will only resist for so long. Perhaps instead of new clubs, we need a new house, with more storage space for all the expensive gear we seem to accumulate through our many hobbies (kayaking, skiing, hockey, mountain biking, Magic: the Gathering, reading, four video game consoles, five computers, and now golf). Anyone know a realtor? We can take them golfing and discuss our options...