The first game I played was only nine holes, and I was exhausted be the end of the game. We walked the course, and I carried my own clubs. Yes, I mean I really did carry my own clubs. The first couple of holes were better than I had hoped they would be, but I was nowhere close to par. Thankfully I avoided the sand traps and the water hazard, but I really have to chalk that up to blind beginners luck. By the end of the ninth hole, my body was so sore that I was just hitting the ball wildly and although I never ended up in the rough, the ball never went very far down the fairway. More than once I asked my father if I could just forfeit the hole, pick up the ball and call the game over, but he was insistent that I finish the hole. If I recall correctly my score on that hole, which was a Par 3, was a very embarrassing nineteen. From that point on, every time I played golf I insisted on renting a golf cart. I understand that golf is great exercise, but I wanted to survive the game!

Maybe next year I’ll try to go online to a website that sells cheap sports tickets and get my father a ticket to go to the Masters himself so he can be part of the action, instead of watching it on television. I’d love to see the look on his face when he realizes what the ticket is for!

By the time that my own children were in elementary school, however, there was a lot more safety awareness going on and people were starting to use a rubber mulch on the playgrounds to make the playgrounds a safer place for the kids. Companies like Rubberrecycle came into the picture and helped to promote the awareness of the need for extra safety precautions on the children’s playgrounds.

When I go to a playground now with my young niece, I am always amazed at how different the playgrounds are from when I was a child. When I was a child, the slides were made of metal and you would climb a ladder to the top of the slide and once you sat down you went straight down. The sides of the slide were only about two or three inches high – not really enough to keep someone from falling off of the side if they leaned too far to one side. Sometimes the metal surface was so hot that it would burn our legs when we sat down on the slide. Now the slides are made of brightly colored material that reminds me of PVC pipes. The slides are twisty and have sides that are so high that you can barely see the head of the child that is using it! The chances of falling off of that slide are much slimmer! I’m glad to see such advances in safety on the children’s playgrounds. I prefer the sounds of cheers to the sounds of tears!

The televisions had two different types of antennas, one was for VHF, which was commercial television, and one was UHF, which was commercial-free public television. Right around fourth or fifth grade I can remember one of my school teachers telling our classroom that cable television was coming to the area, and that people would have to pay to watch television. We thought that was absolutely amazing and outrageous; imagine, having to pay to watch television! The teacher explained that a lot of people would prefer to have cable television because if the paid for the shows then there would be no commercials.

Fast forward to the year 2012. We have options – either cable television or satellite television. Either way we have to pay a subscriber’s fee for the service. And either way we are watching commercials. There are a variety of choices between the providers, and almost everyone I talk to has either comcast or direct tv.

When I had to make a choice between comcast and directtv I chose comcast because I was able to hook up the most television sets for the least amount of money. But recently all of the channels have become scrambled and I need to pay extra fees for the receivers if I want to watch television. To be perfectly honest I felt like I was being ripped off and decided to check out the options for satellite television at www.dx3.net. I ended up ordering Directv, but I still have some television sets at home that do not get ay reception at all. I just can’t afford the extra monthly fees, and it makes me angry that what was supposed to start out as commercial free in exchange for a monthly fee has not turned out that way at all.

I can still remember the summers that I spent at my cousin Betty’s farm when I was an kid. I was crazy about horses, and she had plenty of them. She ran a boarding and training stable, and she even had a grandson of the famous race horse “Man of War” in her stables. I was awestruck. I still have the old hand-me-down riding boots that no longer fit and the now too-small horse riding helmet that she let me keep. Her daughter BJ competed in horse events that I never did get to go see, but I do remember one summer that I stayed with them she was off with some friends on a dream trip Horseback Riding in Italy that they had given her as a college graduation present.

I sure wish my folks had given me such a great gift like that!

I really cannot remember the last time I really watched a lot of TV. Do not get me wrong; we have a TV and with lots of channels on it too. The problem is that I just have not had the time recently to keep up with my shows. We have had DIRECTV for so long and we even got some great deals on it. It has been nice to have because I have a lot of options for when I do have the time to watch TV. Shows like Boardwalk Empire and Damages are not really widely available. Those types of shows are on the channels that play movies all the time. It is always interesting to watch shows like that. They do not always have some huge budget to make an elaborate show, but they still do a really good job presenting the story and distracting me from whatever stresses I had throughout the day. One of the biggest things I have needed distraction from recently is one of my sisters. For whatever reason, we have not been getting along recently. I am really looking forward to the period of time where we are not mad at each other just about every day.

Remembering favorite pizza joints and the tunnel that we had to walk through to get to school, the old school rivalries, and the children’s clothing store that had a special display of real monkeys in the shoe department have been bringing back a lot of memories, and even managed to rekindle some old friendships. Isn’t Facebook wonderful!

Finding myself in an internet cafe at the hotel that I’m staying in, a couple of young ladies interrupted my work, asking me where my restrooms are located! It took me a moment to realize that they must have thought that since I was dressed in a business suit that I must work there! I apologized to the ladies and explained that I did not work there, and I don’t know where the restrooms are. As they walked away I had to suppress a chuckle. I hope they find what they are looking for!