Remember When

[4]

mini golf

Do you remember all our dates to the mini golf course in town? It was the only place in town that was suitable for dates, so we actually ended up going there for the majority of our firsts. Those dates were definitely the most awkward when it came to golfing because we were both constantly trying to show the other one up with the most subpar golf skills. They had different prizes you could pick from if you had a low enough score - it was supposed to be low enough for children to get - that we won once. Technically, I won it, but you liked to call it a joint win. That was the only prize we ever won and it was just a cheap whale plushie that sat on our TV stand for years. We did try to cheat a few times, but the teenagers working usually called us out on our missing moves on the score sheet.

I really sugarcoated "subpar golf skills" because we absolutely sucked. Parents used to get angry at us for holding up the courses and their kids couldn't get through them as fast. Most of the kids found it hilarious that they were better than us and sometimes we would joke with them about how they were better than us. I remember you making a joke once about how it was like practicing parenting. It made us both blush and we fell into a weird silence that wasn't really uncomfortable, more just wondrous.

It almost got to the point where we would spend hours at the putt-putt course, just cheating so neither of us ever finished. The teenager working that day had smoked one too many joints that day and wasn't paying any attention to the patrons in the course, so kids were running everywhere while parents tried to control them. I'm pretty some of them were throwing golf clubs and balls at each other, but we just spent our time distracting each other with kisses or cute babies before hitting the other ball as far back towards the front of the course as possible. We both racked up over 100 strokes because of course we kept track. It was the start of our competitive attitudes towards each other. The fact that we both grew up with siblings didn't help.

We really drove some of the employees crazy, but I know for certain that we had more fun than most people who didn't. There were three golf balls in their entire five gallon bucket that were neon yellow and we made it another competition for one of us to find it without getting caught by whoever was working. You were supposed to just grab the ones on top, but we were out to find them. We made the wrong decision to try it when one of the new girls was working and she legitimately kicked us out of the course. That's still one of the best dates we've had.

The course was really finicky about when it was open. It there was the slightest chance of rain, they'd close. If the temperature dropped below eighty degrees, they'd close. We could only really go when the sun was at its brightest and it was about ninety degrees. It was the worst, but we found a lot of joy from it so we persevered. We'd both usually get incredibly sweaty and would end up chasing each other around to shake sweat on to each other. It was gross, but that was us.

Tuesdays were the slowest days and we skipped classes or work sometimes to go. Because it was the least busiest day, the workers did a lot of maintenance then. One of those things was watering the grass. Spoiler alert: It was always dead anyways. But they would set up the sprinklers nonetheless, and just like everything else we did to those poor people, we made it our personal endeavor to play in it. Obviously it was strictly against the rules, but that never stopped us. We only succeeded twice, but man, we tried our damnedest.