Chairman of the bored
People say golf is boring. Boy, is it ever. I know because I’m out there every sunny day being bored to death. I guess the “golf is boring” crowd thinks someone my age should be out there playing something much more excit- ing, like football or field hockey or basketball. Sorry guys, but despite what you see in the commercials for Cialis and just-for-men vitamins, most people my age cannot windsurf or run marathons or marry women 45 years younger than we are. Although I’m a boring old man who plays golf, I never seem to have time to sit on the sofa and watch hour after hour of non-boring TV shows about extreme cooking, the housewives of who cares, guessing the prices of things I don’t want, buying houses I can’t afford in foreign lands and “Judge Judy.” What’s surprising is how many people who never get off the sofa think that playing golf is boring. But I have an idea that would make golf much more exciting for them. Cheerleaders!
Why is it that just football and basketball have cheerleaders? Because, obviously, they are boring sports. Otherwise, why would they need cheerleaders to spice things up? Why don’t baseball, hockey, tennis, swimming, skiing, track and field and curling have cheerleaders? Think of the benefits. Every time a baseball player looks as if he’s going to scratch or spit — boom — the camera could go to the cheerleaders. It wouldn’t make the game go any faster, but it might seem like it. It sure works for football. It’s funny that the people who complain about the slow pace of baseball will happily sit in front of the TV for four or five hours to watch a onehour football game. Many, many more hours if they watch the pre- and postgame shows that endlessly talk about the stuff the fans are about to, or just did see. Talk about boring. The pace of a televised football game makes a round of golf or a baseball game seem like an action-packed and blazingly fast video game.
The word “boring” interests me. It’s been my experience that people who say they are bored, are boring. Books should be written about it, it is the cause of much suffering.
It’s a big world, there’s plenty to do, there’s plenty that needs to be done. You could be learning to speak French, you could be volunteering at a soup kitchen, you could be reading a best-seller, you could be calling your friends, you could be listening to music, you could be exercising, bowling, ice skating, knitting, hiking, fishing, gardening, playing cards, games, jigsaw puzzles — the list is endless. Why, you could even golf. Certainly, you can find something you like to do no matter how small your town or how remote it is. Being bored is a choice.
Why would anyone choose to be bored? Because nothing comes up to their high standards of not being boring. Instead, the bored get into cars, they text, they drink, they go too fast and crash into trees. YouTube is full of bored people accidentally lighting themselves on fire, destroying their own cars, chopping down the wrong trees, hurting themselves in innumerable and unspeakable ways. It’s like that old joke: What are the last words of a bored redneck? “Hey guys, watch this!”
Not bored now, are you? Oh, I forgot, there is nothing on Earth more boring than waiting for some painkiller in the emergency room while more serious cases are taken inside as you sit in the waiting room bleeding and in agony. The good news is that you’re keeping a lot of EMTs, nurses and doctors from being bored. Yeah, golfing is so boring. I can’t believe I’m going to do it again tomorrow.