Balls

Golf balls. I saw a couple of them on the side of the road during my walk this morning. I can’t imagine how they got there. Granted, there is a decent sized lawn of flat topography near the place where I found them, but I can’t imagine it to be prime practice territory. I donno. Maybe it is. At any rate, it’s the first time I’ve found balls there.

Not that I know that much about golf. All I know is that A) it looks like a very boring sport, B) Mark Twain called it ‘a good walk ruined,’ and C) golfers seem to think their balls are extraordinarily expendable.

I learned that very early on. When I was a young child (before my 6th birthday) my family lived in an apartment complex that was surrounded by vast stretches of lawn. Me & the other kids of the complex commonly used to find golf balls in the course of our outdoor play. A minor treasure, not very useful. A ball that you can’t throw or bounce is not a very fun ball in the eyes of young child.

The most fun we had with them, as I recall, was the occasional dissection. For that we had to have someone- a cooperative grown-up or a child old enough to wield a jack-knife- to cut through the thick skin. Do you know what’s inside a golf ball? Maybe they’re different now, but back then there were layers of rubber bands under the skin. And then under the thickness of rubber band was another ball, a ball with a soft rubber skin. Cut the rubber skin and get to the very center of the ball and there is some sort of goo- as I recall it was a creamy goo, not a sticky goo.

So, yeah, that’s what’s in a golf ball....
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