While walking this morning, I glimpsed a boy about 12 playing golf in his backyard. Brought back memories of being 10-12, doing the same in my smaller yard, digging out a couple of holes and playing with my lone club–an old 7 iron which I used for all kinds of shots, long before I got my first set of Spalding clubs in grade 7 with my own money.
Ah, the power of the imagination of an only child, spinning entire worlds just like that, inspired then by KCND tv–an upstart American station beaming Sunday PGA golf tournaments into Winnipeg homes. Suddenly I was like Arnie, imagining similar ‘armies’ of fans hanging on every one of my shots.
Yes, I grew up that way and imagined a lot of my personal entertainment outside, occasionally joined by real others. But, no, I didn’t need anyone else and there was a private bliss to being left alone that much, free to imagine whatever I wanted: a Wordsworthian childhood in many ways.
So, yes indeed, I knew how today’s golfing boy likely felt, far from the problems of the world: Covid, heat waves, wildfires, vacillating health restrictions, social isolation from peers, wars, numbing climate change, the threats to democracies, and discovery of residential school graves.