Back in the 1970’s I was a kid growing up in Detroit. My father played in a company golf league. Every Saturday morning from about May through October he would gather with other people from the corporate structure to knock the old golf ball around for the better part of the day. The connections he made on those Saturday mornings would prove to serve him and our family well over the years but that’s another story for another day.
Once in a while, maybe two or three times a season, Dad would come to me on Friday night and ask if I’d like to come along and “caddie” for him during his Saturday golf game. I must have been only ten or eleven years old when we started our tradition. To this day I’m not sure who’s idea it was to have Dad drag the kid along on his day of play with the boys, but I never felt like I was in the way and the memories are good. In fact, I still remember the little breakfast joint we would stop in for eggs, hashbrowns, and toast before the round. You know they were good times when you remember the toast.
Now “caddying” really translated into riding along in the cart, keeping mostly quiet, and making sure that we never missed the beer girl on one of her trips around the course. I was good at my job and we all got along just fine.
It was the lunches after the round that still stand out most for me though as good as the toast was. The boys gathering in the grill after the round to add up their scores, pass their dollar bills back and forth to even up various bets, and to generally finish blowing off the stress from a hard week at a struggling automaker before heading back home to the reality of their various families and their shakey careers. The beer would often flow and the stories would soon follow.
There was a Scotsman in the group who could certainly tell a good story. Long, drawn out stories that always seemed just blue enough to be interesting but safe enough that even a young boy like myself could enjoy the moment without being too embarrassed or out of place.
It isn’t one of his long stories that brings him to mind today however. Instead it was a classic moment in which, in responding so someone egging him on to break down and finally buy some new golf clubs to improve his game exclaimed, “My boy? Adding new clubs to my game would be about as useful as adding whipped cream to a pile of sheep crap.”
I know he didn’t invent the saying but it was a moment in my life, the first moment that I had heard the phrase turned, and it has stuck with me to this day.
Why?
Because I’ve come to totally disagree with the concept.
I understand that my Scotsman was just cutting up with the boys but I do believe that any situation, no matter how damaged or uncomfortable, can in fact be improved upon.
This isn’t a “silver lining” speech or a “look on the bright side” commentary. What I’m saying is that too often people resign themselves to their plight and fail to make any effort to improve their situation simply because they just don’t see any way of making things better. Trying is seen as just another chance to fail and so their situation never improves.
Until you take action you’re only inviting things to continue as they are. Take a small step to change your situation. That will naturally lead to a second step and by the time you get to the third step you will have some real momentum on your side and the journey to a better day will have started. You may stumble along the way and you might even end up a little farther behind than when you started at first, but unless you are trying to add a little whipped cream to your life all you are going to end up with is the same pile of sheep crap.
That’s what I’m doing anyway.
