laughing just thinking about it, though it wasn’t funny at first 😆

I cannot be open and talk about the moments in detail because other people were involved (involucradas, as we say in Spanish =) prefer that word =). Well, I can splain one, the first one: clown golf. I think.

Four of us ladies golfed at a course that was not ours, and none of us played well on that particular day. We played so poorly that it became hilarious — I mean, awful. One of us would make a mistake, another would make a worse one, someone would start cursing the ball, the golf course, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,

as the king of siam would say

Then Ellen (I’ll call her that) said: We’re playing clown golf! We laughed and giggled and were OK with the lousy golf after she said that because it wasn’t just bad, it was “clownish.” (Aka: ridiculously bad). One of my friends laughed so hard that she tooted. But only Ellen heard it. So those two laughed hysterically. Then they told us, and we did too (laugh), wishing we had been there, sort of =). If the tooter started laughing while going to her ball, we knew why. And it would start all over again.

in a spirit of conspiracy

Ellen told us that perhaps we needed to relax, and recounted a story about a counselor she had gone to for help to stop smoking cigarettes. (I think she still smokes.) Ellen asked him for cassette tapes (I know! Right?) so she could listen to his advice as needed. She swears she had no idea he had a particular way of pronouncing certain words until she listened to the tape. So, of course, she then proceeded to speak that way. We still do. Sometimes. It’s a cosa nostra thing, an inside joke. (We have a few of those! Like when another friend + I gave people names, even appliance names (so funny!), so we could freely speak in public 😬. Digressed and could so disappear into the black hole of tangency. Just discovered that word exists! I do 🧡 words.)

so clown golf has been a thing

A few years later, Ellen, not laughing, said: this is a clown life. =(  I’d rather remember the tooting and the lousy golf shots and trying to keep warm and dry on that rainy June day.