We played mini-golf today at Myrtle Beach with my in-laws. I won. I won, playing with people who play golf regularly—and who are good at playing golf. They must have all been coming down with something. That, or they were letting me win. Or, and I think this might have been the real culprit, the course was just easy. It certainly had nothing to do with skill, I can tell you that.
We went to lunch and we were opening crackers for my children while we waited for the meal to arrive. My mother-in-law mentioned how they were Lance's Captain's Wafers and that she liked them. I had a sudden flash back of my first introduction to Captain's Wafers and how it also related to golf from when I was a child.
My mother was a math professor at a college when I was young. At some point when I was in elementary school, she moved up into Financial Aid and then later became the Assistant to the President of the college. As the president's assistant, her office was in the President's suite, which was half a floor of the main administration building. That area housed more than just his office, including a large board room for trustee meetings and several other offices for staff.
I spent a lot of time up there on off-hours when my mother was working late or on weekends. I remember playing on the board room tables that were shiny and black. I could slide all over them and climb under them. It was a fun room for a young child. There was also a small kitchenette that was mostly empty of food, but sometimes had things left over from a recent meeting.
One day after school I was waiting for my mother to be finished working and I was hungry. She looked around and found some Lance's Captain's Wafers and told me I could eat as many as I wanted. They didn't look that appealing as little rectangular crackers in two-packs, but when I tasted the first I suddenly changed my mind. They were buttery crackers and they tasted good.
My mother left and in a few minutes I went back into the kitchenette to look for something to drink. I opened the refrigerator and didn't see much so I opened the freezer and was met with a strange sight—a stack of three golf balls directly on top of one another.
I stood there with the door open for a while, just looking at those golf balls and wondering how they were standing on top of one another like that. I also wondered what they were doing in the freezer. It was odd.
My mother came back later and I showed her the golf balls. She laughed and said that Dr. Weems had found out it was possible to stack golf balls if you were very steady-handed and accurate and he'd been working on doing a stack of three. There may have been something about adding a little water to the top of the ball in the hopes they would freeze together, making the bond stronger temporarily, but I don't really remember. She told me it was okay if I wanted to take the stack down, so I did.
Let me tell you, stacking three golf balls is delicate work. I spent lots of time trying to recreate the stack of three, but I never got past two. I think I ate a lot of Captain's Wafers while I worked on the problem. I gave up on the golf balls, but I still love Captain's Wafers to this day.
The Big Boy Update: We played mini-golf today with my in-laws. My son didn't really care about the ball or even the large stick, otherwise known as a club. What he wanted to do was climb on the big rocks (cement boulders), lean over and dip his hands into the unnaturally blue-colored water and play on the railings and ropes. He scored zero for his round, but had lots of fun in the process.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter played mini-golf with us today. She was interested in putting her ball at the start of each hole and trying to hit it. Mostly, she missed. This didn't bother her at all, as she just pick up the ball and took it to the green right by the hole to hit it in. Or, alternately, she would just drop it into the hole itself. Then she would cheer loudly. Her score was riddled with errors and penalty shots she never took, but she had a fantastic time none-the-less
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