Happy Gilmore & Golf

Just to be clear right off the bat – this piece is in no way ridiculing or insulting people who are injured. But the fact remains that there are times when the way an injury occurs calls for laughter. That doesn’t mean that the person isn’t hurt or that his or her feelings are irrelevant. It simply means that we are still able to find laughter in pain.

My husband and his friend, BJ, were hitting golf balls in the field across the street from our house. That isn’t really unusual in itself; they do it fairly regularly. Neither of them are really golfers. They just like to see how far they can hit the ball. Alls good in fun, right?
 
They come back over to the house after about an hour. R asks for some pain medicine. Of course, I immediately ask him what happened, and he replied that he had hurt his hand when he hit the ball. I thought nothing of it and gave him some medicine.
 
Later, we went to town and I realized that R’s left hand was injured – not his right. I sat and thought about it for a minute and determined that it should have been his right hand that was injured, had he been hitting the ball like he claimed. So I asked him, like any nosey wife would do….
 
“How did you happen to hurt that hand hitting a golf ball?”
 
Small pause. “Have you ever seen Happy Gilmore?”
 
Who hasn’t seen Happy Gilmore might be a better question. Of course I have. I nod my head.
 
“Well, you know how he just runs up and hits the ball? We decided we were going to see if we could Happy Gilmore the ball.”
 
I just sat there. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing from my husband – a supposedly rational, grown man. Happy Gilmore the ball? Had they lost their minds? Didn’t they realize that Adam Sandler had likely practiced that move a million times before actually he actually attempted to hit the ball?
 
So, again, I asked him. “What on earth possessed two grown men to try to Happy Gilmore the ball?” I smirked. There was no way that I wasn’t going to laugh at him. I mean, come on. Who is really that dumb? Besides my husband and BJ, of course.
 
He refused to answer me. He sat there for a few minutes in silence, and then he said, “I hit the first one. It went all the way to the tree line. The second one just didn’t work so well.” His tone was that of pure shock. Like, how could I not hit the second ball after I just hit one to the tree line? I have to say that the tree line is a long way from where they were when they were hitting the golf balls.
 
“So,” I said. “The sand didn’t give quite like the ball does, huh?” He didn't hit the ball. Instead, he hit the ground near the ball, and the golf club bent his finger back. Apparently, it hurt.
 
Unfortunately, R didn’t find the situation nearly as amusing as the rest of the family.