Ace in the Hole

At one point in my younger days, I had lofty but silent hopes of someday becoming a professional golfer. I spent hours on the driving range hitting countless buckets of balls at metal signs ala Tin Cup. A shag bag of old golf balls sat in the trunk of my car along with a lob wedge as I used my lunch hour and an open field to hone distances for various elements of my short game. And I devised challenges on the practice green to improve my putting skills. My single digit handicap was admirable, but I think the mental game that is so important in golf never fully developed to the level that allowed me to take that next step. Alas, this is a long-winded way of beginning this month’s sojourn with you.

Why did all of this start, this passion to become a professional? Well, my dad has been an avid golfer since he himself was a young boy, so it was easy to discover all the game had to offer me, even before I was a teenager. But there was another peripheral component that played into my love for the game, and it came as part of my sixth grade English class.

Given the task of writing a 500-word story about anything I wanted, it was a struggle to figure out where I wanted to go with my assignment. Until I remembered the unicorn that all golfers chase. A hole-in-one. At one point during my golfing endeavors, I holed out from the fairway of the 7th fairway at Allentown Municipal Golf Course for an eagle. Yes, I remember the specifics and can still visualize the shot in my head. But it wasn’t a hole-in-one, even if in hindsight my actual achievement of an eagle was more impressive. It required two consecutive good shots instead of one. Alas, I’m heading off on one of those tangents again.

I decided to write a story about what it would feel like to make a hole-in-one. It was a fictitious hole with a blind shot, and long story medium, the group ahead of me on the green in my story erupted with surprise at my tee shot. I assumed it had gone in the hole, only to find out once I arrived on the green that it had hit the flagstick and caromed off to the fringe. I three-putted for bogey, but for that short amount of time while walking up to the green, I knew what it felt like to achieve that momentous accomplishment in the life of a golfer.

Where is this going? Well, the story I wrote inspired me. I got that feeling of adrenaline, not from the golfing achievement I was writing about but rather from the act of writing itself and conveying such deep emotion through the power of words. But that excitement wasn’t encouraged any further (by myself or others) despite my pride in it, so it fizzled out.

Fast forward six years to my senior year in high school. John Rosenberger was my passionate and inspired high school physics teacher. I was interested in the subject, but he amped up my devotion to it with the way he made each topic practical and fun. And that made all the difference, I think, in where I went from there.

I majored in engineering instead of the liberal arts. I pursued a career in the sciences instead of feeding that fleeting love for creative writing. And yet, here I am 30+ years later, and I’ve discovered and nurtured that passion for self-expression through fictional words via a rather circuitous path. How did that happen?

It was my Aunt Mary who noticed the spark that writing created inside of me and nudged me along the path I continue to follow today. I might not be wildly successful or traditionally published, but I’m focused on touching people’s lives one reader and one story at a time. And that’s where the crux of this entire message comes full circle.

What we do is important, but why we do it and the influence that others provide to nudge us in one direction or another is so incredibly powerful. I remember serving as den leader on my son’s Cub Scout journey. My Mustang served as a vehicle to help those young boys learn how to change a tire, and I remember being passionate about sharing that skill with them. I can’t help but wonder whether some of that excitement I shared rubbed off in a positive way like it did for me with my physics teacher in the realm of the sciences or with my aunt and writing fiction.

It reminds me that we don’t have to be in a formal teaching position to provide that spark of excitement that sends someone down a path toward their destiny. A subtle nudge of encouragement to a friend or family member. A simple smile to a stranger. That’s all that might be needed to make a monumental difference. It sound melodramatic, and perhaps it is from someone who is admittedly enamored with the idea of creating those emotions in other people through the written word. But maybe there is some truth in it, especially given the evidentiary proof that a spark created more than four decades ago has been fanned to life as a brilliant flame from something as simple as a kind word from another human being.

I never have garnered that coveted hole-in-one achievement as a golfer, but I know what it feels like. And when you get that feeling, no matter how it arrives, that experience itself might just be an ace in the hole, the secret sauce that propels you down a path you’re meant to follow.

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