A witness to a rarity

I lost. There it is.  I have been remiss in not congratulating Dickie the Peap for having won our latest golf grudge match this past Friday afternoon. After a spirited back and forth on the course, we walked away with me being down 2 strokes to the little miser. As a result of suffering this humiliation, the consequence was one of typical Dickie the Peap: me having to lay out a whole quarter (a quarter!) to the triumphant victor. Along with my quarter I offer heartfelt congratulations. You were the winner. You were the victor. You were the better player. For that day.

It's funny, though.   My prize, however, was much greater. What I took away was well worth the cost of the contest. Like witnessing an unsuspecting, majestic, African lion in the wild; the splitting of a cell under the eye of a microscope, or the pause of a hummingbird in mid flight, I witnessed an event of such epic proportion that I am sure I will carry with me for the rest of my life. It truly was a memorable moment.  You see, one of our rituals during this periodic battle of lousy golfers is that we first have a lunch and a couple of pre-golf beverages to relax the nerves in advance of  the pending battle.  One of the caveats is that we alternate the hosting duties for these lunches.  This particular day's responsibility fell upon the shoulders of the resident Big Spender.   Everything was going well; the food delicious, the conversation varied, the beverages satisfying as usual.  Our waitperson came by and  picked up the bill along with the barely used, like-new condition, 3 year old credit card   from El Cheapo meant to satisfy our responsibility to the restaurateur.  Upon her return, she placed the completed bill and card in front of me.  What happened next was truly a rarity. Imagine a frog that snares a bug with it's tongue from 12 inches away; a serpent that strikes a mouse with almost invisible swiftness, or the force that a machine spring exhibits after losing it's resistance.  That same type of reaction time, force,  and motion was what I witnessed by the exhibition of the arms of the little miser flying across the table to secure his card.  Any inanimate object in the path of flight would have surely been damaged, broken, or I am confident, possibly destroyed.  It was that quick.

For the price of a quarter, I know now what I am dealing with:  the raw, unharnessed, power of nature.   I just hate to think what happens if we increase the wager on our golf game .