I was telling Brent, our lawyer at work, that golf was a perfect vehicle for finding out the true nature of a person. He was intrigued but a bit doubtful, so I decided that I would relate of interviewing success by looking at somebody’s room or talking to them. If you had the choice of interviewing an employee or looking at their bedroom, what do you think would be the better way of figuring out if they would be a good employee?
It turns out that looking at their bedroom is the important one.
Golf is just like that, only it is with a different twist. how somebody golfs tells you about themselves. Now, there well may be some amount of deception on the golf course, but generally, the play of the game keeps people thinking about the game rather than just the people.
I play golf like I play my life. When I was younger, I was more “go for it” and more aggressive. Now that I’ve aged, I am still very competitive but I play for the sure thing. I wait until the other guy blows up.
I believe that I am rather controlled on the golf course. When I hit a bad shot, I say “nuts” or “rats” but no swearing. I try and generally be upbeat, and congratulate the other player on a good shot.
I also like to score better than the other guy.
But life, similar to golf, also goes on for a long time, and as you draw close to the end of the game, you start to think that it is a good time to go home. As I stand one year away from my 50th birthday, I realize that I am on hole 13 of of the course. I have finished the front nine, and even if I have a brilliant last five holes, I am not going to finish like a pro. That decision was made a long time ago.
However, my wife and I have done a bunch of different stuff to keep ourselves young. I look at my companions when I play golf, and they ride around in golf carts. I walk.
The walking is hard. It is a lot of calories and a lot of effort, but it keeps me young. My wife is a hard core athlete. As she reaches her 50th year, she is still waking up early in the morning and swimming like a maniac. We also have to keep young because we decided to have our final child when my wife was forty. This means that we need to act like young parents.
Yet, we are getting closer to the age where we will not have the children at home. Our oldest daughter has been in a phase of great growth and stepping out to extend her reach in this world. She is the Senior Class president, and she is trying to be totally engaged in this activity, but only in her own way. This week she was called out as “athlete of the week” for her last cross country race, where she seriously improved year over year. That is her pictured above: In her cross country sweat shirt with the “Toy Story” cupcakes that she made for her senior class meeting. (The theme this year is “Toy Story” for their class.) If she could only get some more sleep, I would truly say that she was on top of the world.
However, the fact that our daughter is a senior is coming home to roost. The other night, my wife made dinner for our kids and myself, except my oldest daughter was at a senior event. As we sat down, there was an empty seat at the table.
We have a play whiteboard next to the table for the kids to have fun with. My wife walks over to the whiteboard and grabs a pen. She writes on the whiteboard “This is what it is going to be like next year. 
“, with the frowning smiley on the board. Our daughter is going away to college, and we are going to be 3 at home, then 2, then 1, then zero in the years ahead.
My wife says, “I want my grandchildren.”
