10 things I would rather do than play golf

Friday is our annual (except for last year, when we thankfully didn’t have it) company golf outing. And seeing as how I’ve been with the company for just under two years, it’s my first. In fact, thanks to last year’s hiatus, I didn’t even know it was a tradition until a few days ago.

It’s a four-man scramble, so I can completely suck, and as long as my team has at least one ringer, we’ll still do fairly well. Even if my team doesn’t have a ringer, I can blend into the mediocrity that is everyone else’s golf game.

You see, my company has about 25 people, all of four of whom play golf on a regular basis. We have eight people who ride bikes on a regular basis and about 25 people who like to go to the movies on a regular basis. So I can think of at least two other activities that would have been more popular than a golf outing.

But we’re having a golf outing, for better or for worse. I have therefore established two goals for myself for the upcoming round, a baseline goal and a reach goal. Baseline goal=hit the ball without missing. Reach goal=hit the ball productively enough that at least one of my shots is used.

In order to give myself even a reasonable chance of hitting my baseline goal, today at lunch I went to the driving range with Daren. In addition to opening up his garage as if it were my own personal service course and acting as my mentor for the upcoming ‘cross season, Daren, who is the equivalent of a Cat. 1 golfer, also agreed to accompany me to the driving range. Which basically meant do his best to coach me into some semblance of a decent swing only for me to ignore all of his coaching. I’m not sure which of us was more frustrated  with my pathetic skills and failure to implement his constructive feedback. At least I was consistently making contact (albeit not productively) by the time we were done.

I can’t say I had fun, though. I simply do not enjoy golf. Here are ten things I would rather do than play golf:

1. Chop onions.
2. Watch any of the Twilight movies.
3. Get tattoos on my eyelids.
4. Watch all of the Twilight movies back-to-back.
5. Shave another man’s back.
6. Invite the Jehova’s Witnesses in for a discussion.
7. Listen to Glenn Beck.
8. Perform my own vasectomy.
9. Campaign for Sarah Palin’s presidential election.
10. Work.

I’m trying to figure out if there’s a pressing deadline that I can invoke so I can stay at work instead of attending the golf outing on Friday. I’m sure I can come up with something between now and then.