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By Reid Champagne
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told myself not to go for the leftover quesadillas after 11 p.m., but something about Jay Leno’s monologue made me a bit peckish, and before I knew what I was doing, I had eaten the whole plate that had been wrapped so neatly in the refrigerator with the Post-It note reading “Do not touch.”
I remember getting up once during the night, but I don’t remember waking up any more after that, so what I am about to tell you actually did happen, at least as far as I am still able to distinguish fantasy from reality (currently a 3-2 vote in my house). I mean, I believe it is possible those quesadillas did in fact kill me, at least for a time, and that I did actually experience a life-after-death event.
Anyway, there I was at the Pearly Gates, near a sign reading: “bag drop.” St. Peter (who wore a plastic name tag bearing the name, “Celestial Golf and Yacht Club”) approached me wearing shorts and a white golf shirt, the Nike “swoosh” present even in this realm.
“You have a 10:20 a.m. tee time,” Peter intoned.
I stood motionless and finally mustered the nerve to ask, “Is this heaven?”
“We have 20-minute tee times, sir,” Peter replied, “what do you think?”
I was beside myself.
You mean I actually made it into heaven? And there’s golf in heaven? And I’m teeing off at 10:20? In heaven? How did I make it?”
“Yeah, well, God is merciful, and I guess not always on his A game either,” Peter responded, eyeing me doubtfully, then checking his tee sheet suspiciously.
A small angel (with wings and a white gown, no less) carried my bag to a cart where another bag had already been strapped on. I wonder who I’ll be playing with, I thought to myself, but didn’t have to wonder long, as a short, pasty-skinned man emerged from the grill room, resplendent in a blue waistcoat and the rest of the foppery and finery of 18th-century French royalty. I couldn’t help but notice he was headless, an unattractive stump of a neck cleanly severed at the halfway point.
“I’ve paired you with Louis XVI,” Peter said. “I hope you don’t mind.”
Peter pointed beyond, to the first tee, where I noticed a large cockroach and Shemp Howard warming up.
“You’ll be playing with Franz Kafka and one of the Three Stooges,” Peter continued. “I trust that will be acceptable. Play away, gentlemen.”
“Aw, Shemp?” I groaned as I approached the tee. We all shook hands – all except for Kafka, of course. None of us could figure out which feeler to grab, so we all sort of nodded politely in the general direction of his twitching antennae – except for Louis XVI, of course, who couldn’t really nod.
I decided to break the ice.
“So I take it, if this is heaven, we’ll be playing Augusta National,” I said with a knowing smile.
Shemp looked at Kafka and snickered. Louis XVI shook his neck and sighed.
“We’re in heaven, sure,” Shemp explained. “But we’re in the part of heaven for those who just barely make it.”
“But why?” I asked. “Isn’t heaven the same for everyone?”
Shemp looked at me the way Moe used to look at him.
“Do you really think you’re in the same company as Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi and Secretariat?” he asked.
“You mean...” I began but was interrupted.
“Is anybody gonna hit?” Kafka asked with some irritation. He had managed to wrap about six of his feelers in some weird kind of interlocking grip around his driver, while keeping his antennae out of the way.
The course turned out to be all right, but it was no Augusta or Bulle Rock, truth be told. But the pace of play was fine, and I was holding my own, parring the first four holes and nearly holing an eagle chip at the par-5 seventh. I was two strokes ahead of Shemp, three ahead of Kafka (who was having a lot of trouble with his clubs twisting in his feelers), and I was neck and neck (so to speak) with Louis XVI. I was impressed by how well Louis stroked the ball, managing himself quite well around the course, all without the benefit of having a head.
“The key to this is not thinking,” he explained to me. “And, as you can plainly see,” he added, prodding his open neck with his 6-iron,” I don’t have much chance to think very much anymore anyway.”
Well, I managed to keep my own head above water and was in the lead by a shot as we approached the uphill par-4 18th. Louis immediately pressed me, and Shemp and Kafka were forced to go along for the ride.
I stroked a beautiful drive down the left side about 240 yards. Shemp followed, whistling a low hook into the deep rough on the left. Kafka scampered to the tee and whiffed, as two more of his feelers finally fell off at the end of a long round. Kafka had been struggling on the back, and Louis had tried to offer him a hit from his snuff box to try to help him relax. Kafka sniffed, then sneezed so hard he lost one of his antennae. Evidently, those things are important to a roach, because after he lost the one, he couldn’t find the fairway, and wound up taking three straight double bogeys coming in.
Louis then strode up, pushed a tee into the ground, cleared his throat and then swung in a long, slow arc that sent his tee shot low and long down the middle of the fairway, bounding and finally coming to rest 20 yards ahead of mine.
“Shot,” I said in the direction of Louis’s headless neck.
“I wasn’t kidding when I told them, ‘L’etat, c’est moi,’ was I?” he answered haughtily.
Well I wasn’t about to lose my first match in heaven to a deposed French king with no head (to say nothing of losing to a Stooge and an insect), so I surveyed the 160 yards I had left and chose a 7-iron (it is heaven, remember). I knew I would have to jump on it a little, and I did.
But then everything fell apart. First, though, I felt the ball leave the club face, the click of the ball and club perfect. The ball rose majestically into the deep azure sky and then began its inevitable descent onto the green, I saw it bounce once, then track right to the pin and disappear.
“Oh my, God,” I cried out. “It went in!”
I jumped straight into the air, then leapt across the fairway. I ran all the way to the hole, looked in, saw my ball, and pulled it out and turned to my playing partners.
They were all suddenly gone, vanished.
I turned to my cart, and it was gone as well. In its place was a woman I knew all to well, my staff bag slung over her shoulder and walking towards me, smiling in my victory.
It was my wife, and that’s when I knew, as magnificent and wonderful as it had all been, it had all been just another dream following a too rich late night snack.
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