Bob and I have been playing golf together every week. No matter what, we always make it down to the club for our game. Bob and I are consistent, both in our game and our friendship.

It’s not an overbearing sort of friendship. We don’t have to talk incessantly, or make jokes all the time. We just are, and it works.

Last Thursday was a restless, lazy sort of day. It was hot, and even the bugs seemed to hover more slowly than usual. We couldn’t really commit to our game, which is unusual. Sure, we don’t always ‘bring our game,’ but it’s very rarely that both of us have an off day at the same time. Realizing that it just wasn’t working, we came to a compromise. Neither of us wanted to head home; after all we had come here to have a break from home! So we decided to head down to the driving range and work on our swings.

Our Golf Club is a beautiful place, with tree-lined fairways, surrounded by mountains. But that day, not even the scenery could snap us into action. When we got to the driving range our strange and unproductive mood followed us. While unenthusiastically lingering over which club to use, a sudden thought crossed my mind.

“Hey Bob! Remember when we were kids in high school? What we’d do on a day like this?”

“Yeah! We’d go to Carl’s place and bring out the hose pipe! Soak ourselves silly and then run down the street like maniacs to Becka’s and climb that old tree in her yard. Her mom would give us strawberry ice cream and we’d spend hours up there until we dried off and had nothing left to talk about…I think it was some kind of acacia tree…”

“Hey Bob…”

I turned to Bob with a gleam in my eye; a gleam that Bob recognized instantly and was very familiar with; a gleam that meant only one thing: a fantastic, spectacular, groundbreaking idea!

Although we’d ‘grown up,’ donned suits and gone to work, married our wives and raised children, Bob and I would always share a bond; a bond that could only come from knowing someone your whole life. Bob took less than a second to know that something crazy and spontaneous was going through my head. With one shared glance, we were both transported to ‘the old days.’

I recalled a section of the course that was cordoned off for a bit of special attention. Most importantly, I remembered the sprinklers being on!

I dumped my clubs and ran as fast as I could towards the cordoned off section, Bob close at my heels. Luckily there were only a couple of people around, who seemed to have been hit by the same bug as us because they just looked up dazedly and went back to what they were doing.

Bob and I danced among the sprinklers. We were kids again, completely free, thinking about nothing but the moment. It wasn’t over though. Our next destination was a patch of trees that looked way too tempting to bypass.

I gave Bob a leg up, hoisting him onto a comfortable looking branch. But mid-hoist I heard voices in the distance… some people were running towards us!

“Hey! Just what the hell do you think you’re doing!” one of them was shouting.

They were approaching fast. In the excitement Bob lost his footing (I guess soaking golf shoes don’t make for successful tree-climbing!) and after that it all seemed to happen in slow motion. I saw him tumbling towards me and I didn’t have enough time to move out of the way. 180 solid pounds of Bob landed squarely on top of me and we both ended up in a soaking heap at the foot of the large old tree that was clearly wiser than us.

Two grown men, in full golfing attire, soaked through, struggling to get up off the floor. What an ungainly sight we must have made! The angry staff members had reached us by then, and along with the looks of recognition on their faces were looks of utter disbelief.

Bob and I looked at each other and burst into raucous laughter. Whatever music we’d have to face, it was definitely worth it.