The next phase opened in a conference room in a Houston skyscraper. I was in the company of another lawyer, whom I knew, a couple of accountants and some junior financial analyst types. The representatives of our respective clients had retreated to their phone booths to confer with their superiors about the progress of the negotiations. Soon, they would come back and we would go off and caucus separately about what was possible, and what wasn't. But, for the time being, in the hurry up and wait of business transactions, we were in waiting stage.
My lawyer friend opened his briefcase and took out the handle of a golf club, which he began to fondle, gripping it, examining his grip, relaxing his grip and gripping it again. This went on for a while. I knew what he was doing because a few years earlier, long before I'd taken up golf, I'd been in the company of a Halliburton CEO (several CEOs before the evil Dick Cheney, who kinda messed up Halliburton before he really messed up our country's international standing), and the guy had been doing the same thing. I asked him what he was doing, and got a little lecture on the importance of proper grip in a good golf swing, how grip pressure can be varied and so on. Afterwards my boss elaborated--the man had the habit of playing with his golf grip when he was either bored or nervous, and I could rest assured that, given who I was, I was boring him, not making him nervous.
My friend stopped playing with his grip and looked at me. Do you play golf, he asked. I said no, not much, owned clubs, that was about it. How old is your son, he asked. I told him, twelve, not a teenager yet. He nodded. Earlier in the afternoon we'd been bitching to each other about kids in adolescence and teenage misbehaviors, be they large or small, they are endless. He spoke again. You ought to take up golf with your kid, he advised. He put the grip down. And got intense.
You'll be bad and your kid will be bad at first, he said. That will be good, because you'll both be learning something together. And because he's a kid, he'll get better at it fast than you do. And he'll like that. He'll also like driving the golf cart, at least until he gets his driver's license. And you get out there on a golf course with your kid, if you keep your mouth shut, he will talk. He will talk about all kinds of stuff. Shit he would never dream of telling you in any other situation. For hours. Especially if you get stuck behind a bunch of really slow groups. At least, that's how it worked for him and his boy. They played golf together a couple of times a month, and some weeks it was the only time they were speaking to each other.
So, the advantages of taking up golf again included the possibility of five hour rounds behind slow hackers, and playing really poorly myself. The payoff was the chance to stay connected to my kid.
It made perfect sense.
No comments:
Post a Comment