Feelin' like a kid again

My spouse is on a(nother) golf trip of a lifetime, this time to Pebble Beach on the Monterey Peninsula in California. He'll play three world-class courses, have a good time with the guys, and come home refreshed and exhausted. You play, you pay.

But this time, I can go with him and watch him play. Sort of. Pebble Beach the course, has webcams on the first, seventeenth, and eighteenth, plus a look at the club house. Wouldn't I like to see him tee off, he asks as he calls.

Well... okay. I get the time, sit myself down dutifully fifteen minutes early, and go through to the link. And, yes, there's the first tee at Pebble Beach. (It could be Outer Mongolia for all I know, but we'll assume everything's on the up and up.) The webcam, to my chagrin, is not streaming video. Every eight seconds it refreshes itself. This is really interesting and amusing. See the stream of water on the flowers? Now, wait eight seconds and the man with the hose will appear. Eight more--gone!

The cam is trained on the pro tee off spot and that's not where the action will be that I'm supposed to watch so I will have to strain my eyes and train my attention further down field. I'm early to the game so I watch the group at 9:20 CDT go off and they could be two-headed alien creatures for all the distinction there is between them. Hmmm... if I only knew what he was wearing. If it were red, or bright green, or yellow.

Phone call. Am I watching? They've been called. Wearing? Three of them are in dark pants. How about you? I ask. Dark pants, dark vest, blue shirt.

So I sit and watch the less-than-matchstick size men tee off.

Duty done, I'm reminded of a time when I was still in elementary school. My dad was asked to go to the New Year's Day Cotton Bowl Game. Mother kept my sister and me amused all afternoon in front of the black and white television watching for Daddy in the stands. And trust me, the camera didn't pan the crowd even in eight second intervals.

We never saw him--and I never forgot the ruse.