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Eye Of The Beholder
By Michael J. Cunningham
A normal person looking at the picture would say it was a photograph of three distinguished, mature gentlemen wearing snappy golf attire, sharing a long friendship and a love of golf. I and my two golf buddies, EdBob on my right and Tommy on my left, are smiling into the sun. We are each holding a golf club above our head as a sign of our recent triumph. Two huge palm trees served as the background, and a small pond (holding dozens of my golf balls) is to our right. The vibrantly green, eighteenth fairway stretches out behind us into eternity. A guy in a golf cart that looked like a Model-T car is in the picture by accident. He is zooming away from us, up the cart path to our left.
The reason we are smiling is because we had just come in sixth in the annual “Three-man Scramble Tournament” at San Vicente Golf Club. This was a ten-year high for my threesome, and besides earning us untold respect and immeasurable pride, our play earned each of us twenty-one dollars and forty cents. Who wouldn’t be smiling?
I was fingering the photo, looking around my den and wondering how I would frame it and where I would hang it, when my wife, Linda, burst into the room with my lunch (chicken salad sandwich, chips, and a Miller Lite beer), snapped the photo away from me, looked at it, and said, “Howard, can’t you find any normal people to play golf with?”
“They’re normal,” I responded.
Linda has known my two friends for forty-some years, almost as long as I have. Tommy and EdBob and I played baseball together when we were twelve and thirteen and beyond. Now, in our sixties, golf is a sport that still allows us to display our athletic prowess and to exercise our fierce competitive spirit.
“They’re normal,” I repeated, when Linda did not respond to my first defense.
“If they’re normal, I’d hate to meet any of your screwed up buddies.”
“I’m just wondering where I’ll hang it,” I said, trying not to argue with Linda, because I seldom (never) won.
“You ought to hang it on the inside the barbeque before we do the steaks.” She can be so sarcastic. I think she thinks she’s funny, but I don’t see the humor
I didn’t know how to respond. She didn’t wait for my retort. “If they’re so normal, why did you have to bail both of them out of jail last year?”
“EdBob was going through a crisis.”
“EdBob is always going through a crisis. What did he get popped for? Phone sex, wasn’t it?”
She was really starting punch my buttons. “It wasn’t phone sex. And, besides, EdBob was really, really sad. A little compassion, maybe?”
“Sad and drunk.”
“Yea, but it wasn’t phone sex.”
Linda left the room and returned a few minutes later sipping from a short, clear glass, half full of whiskey. “It was something with a phone. Phone something.”
“Stalking,” I explained. “Phone stalking. EdBob would never do phone sex. He just wanted to know why Cindy told him never to call her again.”
“So, you had to bail him out. Ten-thousand dollars? Why don’t you ever stand up to those guys?”
“Hello, Linda. He paid me baaaack.” I kind of sang the words to make them more sarcastic.
Linda sipped her drink. “Then he pays five-thousand to a lawyer so he won’t go to prison?”
“EdBob had to have a defender. Cindy wouldn’t drop the charges.”
“That’s fifteen-thousand dollars, Howard. Pretty expensive phone call. Then when everything was over, he buys her a car?”
“So? That was just EdBob’s way of telling Cindy there were no hard feelings.” I had to sit down. I took a bite of the sandwich.
“If EdBob is so normal, tell my why he married her. After she tried to get him thrown into prison, why did he marry her? And now, after the divorce, she has his house?” She sipped again from her drink. “EdBob has really gotten wise in his golden years.” (So sarcastic.) “And what about normal Tommy.”
“Now, don’t get on Tommy. He really is normal.”
“How many seventy-five year old men do you know who gets his wife’s name tattooed on his ass, Howard? Right before she leaves him?”
“She came back, Linda. Hello!”
“Then he tries to beat up the guy he thinks stole his wife?”
“So? If someone stole me, wouldn’t you try to beat her up?” I had her on this one. She didn’t respond. “Well, if someone stole you, I’d whip his ass good,” I countered. “And Tommy is not seventy-five. He’s only sixty-three. My age. You know that.” She thinks her exaggerations are so funny.
“But Tommy tried to beat up the wrong guy, Howard. He went to the wrong house.”
“You never made a mistake, Miss Perfect?”
“And the guy he tried to beat up was a professional wrestler? Remember, Tommy couldn’t open his eyes for a week?”
“You’re doing it again, Miss Exagerationer. The guy was a high school wrestler. Not a pro. And it wasn’t a week. It was only five days.” I corrected. I remember because I had to lead Tommy around for five days. Maybe it was six.
“And, what was Tommy’s bail?”
“Not as much as EdBob’s.”
“Did he pay you back, Howard?”
“He said he’d pay me on Tuesday,” I assured her.
Linda took the photo off the desk in front of me and left the room. I was sure she was going to tear it up or burn it.
When she returned, she had put the picture in an oaken frame. She looked around the room as I had earlier. “Where to put this thing?” she asked herself out loud.
I had thought about hanging next to my autographed picture of Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer on the back wall. The only other option was to hang it on my side wall next to the picture Linda bought me for my birthday – A picture of The Three Stooges playing golf. “I think I’ll hang it there,” she said, nodding toward the side wall. “Make it a theme wall.” She thinks she’s such a wit.
Linda wouldn’t stop. “You’re going to end up in the poor house because of your screwed-up buddies, Howard. You’re not tough enough with them. You’re too easy. You never stand up for yourself.”
Now, that did it. That really got me steamed. I was about as mad at Linda as I had ever been. I was so mad I almost...said something.
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