TIME FOR A LITTLE IRRELEVANCE

by Dr. W.R. Marshall, Ph.D
January 26, 2008
NewsWithViews.com

Hillary beats Barack. Barack beats Hillary�then Bill gets all snippy. McCain jumps in front of Romney. Romney jumps back in front of McCain�then Honest John takes money from the Swift Boat pukes he vilified in 2004. Huckabee�s still nipping at everybody�s heels�then pounding out a Noel Redding riff. Edwards still isn�t taking money from anyone�not that anyone is offering. Thompson is still napping. Rudy�s watch is still stopped on 9/11. There may actually be other people running for president who we don�t hear from anymore�hopefully Ralph Nader isn�t one of them. Speaking of not being heard from, anyone seen Cheney lately? And Dubya, fresh on the heels of his most recent failure in the Middle East (it�s a long list) is back trying to screw-up the economy just a little bit more...yeah, I didn�t think it was possible either, but Bush is a guy who went broke in the oil business.

So, this week I thought I�d ignore all that and write about the time I tried to become a caddy�you know, one of those guys who carries golf bags.

It�s simple really. I like golf. I like slinging my bag on my back and walking eighteen. I like all the cool stuff you can buy on EBay. I like plaid.

The problem is, I�m a working writer, and not a Carl Hiaasen or Tony Kornheiser working writer. I don�t have the cash to play Pebble or the connections to play Winged Foot�and apparently, neither do my editors. So you�ll usually find me in line at the local Muni waiting for the cheap rates to kick in.

Then something set a plan in motion that would get me on a course just a half an hour from my house, which just happens to be one of the best golf courses in America�an ad that read: �Caddies Wanted. Call CaddieMaster at��

I made the call. The voice at the other end of the line was robotic but friendly. We chatted, the words �service industry� and �independent contractor� came up several times. I understood the first phrase meant I had to be polite, and the latter meant there were no benefits. He also asked if I would mind wearing a white jumpsuit.

Then I asked a question, �Do caddies get to play?�

�Any day after 3:00pm,� came the reply.

�I�d love to wear a white jumpsuit.�

I would get to play a track where the driving range was nicer then the course I play, and all I had to do was wear white prison issue and lug a few bags around this little piece of heaven a couple a days a week�they were even going to pay me a few bucks.

Now, you�d think the next step would be to head to the course, let the folks in charge see you�re not a degenerate or a congressman, do a few push-ups, and start looping.

Nope.

The next step is a rather lengthy online test, somewhere around seventy-five questions, which, outside of one question asking if you�re Native American, concerns itself almost exclusively with finding different ways to ask the same two questions:

Good news; I�m neither.

Now I get the face to face. After going through security and having my shoes scanned for gelignite, I was directed to the caddy shack where I sat on plush leather furniture along with half a dozen other guys who, like me, were neither psychotic nor junkies.

After a while, a guy who looked like Scooter Libby came out. He told us, if hired, we would be working for an independent corporation hired by the golf courses to hire caddies, and business was booming. The company had caddies all over the nation and they were spreading overseas. Soon all caddies around the world would be wearing the white jumpsuit of the CaddieMaster Corporation.

Then he thanked us for coming and said we�d be getting one more phone call the following day.

Granted, all this seemed a bit much to just schlep some hedge fund hack�s golf bag, but it was a Top Ten Course according to Golf Digest.

The next day the call came. Not a single question about golf. Lots of questions dreamt up by humorless HR types about being a �team player� and the best ways to bow and scrape before the wealthy. Less than an hour later, I got a second call telling me I simply �wasn�t qualified� to be a caddie.

No closely mown fairways, no perfect greens?

�There must be some mistake. I have a PhD, I�ve trained with the ancient masters, I can cut back on red meat!�

�Yes,� he replied with his robot voice. �Yes�we�ll be watching you.�

And he hung up.

So now I�m back in line at the Muni, waiting for the Twilight Rates, hoping I don�t twist an ankle in one of the gopher holes on number 8, wondering how things went so wrong�and just the other day I was watching CNN from Iraq, and in the background I could have sworn I saw a Halliburton truck being unloaded by men in white jumpsuits.

� 2008 - W.R. Marshall - All Rights Reserved

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