Last Friday my buddy texted me roughly an hour before a scheduled tee time at Thornapple pointe golf course. Not having a whole lot going on I told him I was in and made my way to the course. We had a a threesome but not my kind of threesome, three dudes and the other two definitely were not my type. Regardless, there was a threesome in front of us that was even worse than being stuck behind a trifecta of 70 year old women. The threesome contained a dad and his two daughters, and he was teaching them how to play golf. The three of us had drives in the fairway on one and watched as the dad threw a ball into the bunker and was giving his daughters a tutorial on how to hit the proper sand shot. Finally I yelled “come on man!” and raised up my hands in disbelief and disgust. He looked at me in disdain and then proceeded to continue to instruct his daughters on the finer points of various golf shots. We ended up calling the clubhouse to have the ranger tell the guy he needed to let us play through. On hole two he didn’t let us play through but he finally relented on the third hole. If I were taking Aiden and Parker out for their first round of actual golf I would let everyone behind me play through so that we didn’t feel the pressure behind us of angry golfers (especially if any of them had the potential to get as angry as I can). My drive was on the right side of the fairway and dipshit dad and his two offspring were on the left so I did not have the potential for a run in with him. However, the other two guys were in the same cart and did interact with dill doe Baggins and he was a super douche. When one of the guys was being friendly (which I wouldn’t have done, killing someone with kindness has never been an option in my mind) and asked him how it was going the guy responded “it could be better”. This guy was oblivious not only to golf etiquette but also to how the world works. The guy, Dane, played football at WMU and is built like a brick shit house. It’s probably good I am not built like that or I’d be in prison doing a 5-10 year stretch for beating someone within an inch of their life.

On Monday morning, when I would typically be water skiing, I opted to go to the gym. The river is a mess right now with all the rain and skiing was not an option. My work out that day involved pull ups and the squat racks at MVP have pull up bars on them. One of the squat racks was occupied by a guy who was doing squats and after his sets would lay a towel down in the squat rack and res himself on his forearms and look at his phone. This made it nearly impossible to work in and do pull ups on that particular squat rack. I had never seen the guy before but I had seen the guy occupying the other squat rack frequently. He was about five foot five, wearing a Lululemon white cotton v-neck and his forehead had no expression what so ever due to a lot of botox, probably the botox equivalent of HGH that was in Barry Bond’s system when he hit 93 home runs in one season and his head wouldn’t stop growing. The guy had also had a lot of work done and you could tell he fancied himself as a pretty boy. Needless to say, even though I had never spoken to him, I fucking hated him. This tool bag was doing squats and then he had a mat placed right behind the squat rack so he could do planks and when he wasn’t doing planks he was doing some other squat type exercise directly behind the rack, making it nearly impossible to get in there and do pull ups. I say nearly impossible because I said fuck it and went in and did a set of close grip pull ups, not to be confused with wide grip pull ups, while he was standing back from the rack doing his squat type stretches. This pissed him off and he said to me “whoa, if you just ask I will let you work in and do your sets”. So, when I was ready to do my next set I asked if I could work in, his response was to indignantly step back and let me do my pull ups. However, when I completed my set he pointed out a different area where I could do pull ups. I told him I didn’t want to do them over there because that machine sucked and wasn’t as good for pull ups. (I’m very particular about my pull ups just as I am with a lot of other things in life). He went on to say he had the squat machine and it was for squats and that he basically didn’t have to share. However, if it was just for squats why would it have the pull up bars on it? I told him he could do his planks and squat stretching anywhere, to which he didn’t have an answer and could only say that he had been working out at MVP for a decade and had never had a run in. I attributed this fact to no one having the balls to stand up to the little douche bag because this was not the first time he had monopolized a piece of equipment and violated the basic tenants of gym etiquette.

Monday afternoon I was out at Green Lake with the kids and had to grab my dad from Railside assisted living to bring him over for dinner. I left my kids and their friend with my sister so I could get him and also go to Maple Hill to get my kids a golf bag for their clubs in preparation for their first session of golf camp at Quail Ridge. However, there were no individual junior bags for sale, the only way you could get a junior bag was to purchase a brand new set of clubs. The mark up was exorbitant and I was caught between a rock and a hard place. Ultimately I ended up buying a set for each kid going against everything I believe as a Dutch person. I dropped the kids off at their golf lesson on Tuesday morning and when I saw them later that day I asked them how it went. Aiden responded, dad, you bought me left handed clubs. What are the odds of that? Maybe one out of four, but in my defense the tailspin I was sent into by having to purchase new clubs distracted me from checking the box the clubs came in to make sure they were right handed. Fortunately, Aiden is so bad that having to golf left handed for a morning probably had little impact on his performance. I”m just glad I didn’t get Parker a left handed set of clubs.