TEA

Sometimes, as a reader, I get confused.  Sometimes, as a reader, I am surprised.  Never, as a reader, have I gotten this.  Let me now take you by the hand, and attempt to show you the biggest literary shocker I’ve ever encountered.

On the cover page of a book titled Golf Dreams, there is an elderly man— not old, elderly— he is wearing a typical loose golf cap, white-on-white golf shoes, and he’s swinging what looks like a 1990’s low wedge with the flexibility of an old man.  In the background, there are neatly lined trees, some forest green while others start to turn yellow, and a clear blue sky.  Given that I’ve played golf for a long time— enough time to swear that I’ve played with a man with the same worn out look— I now the kind of crowd that would read a golf book.  Golf magazines are extremely conservative (they probably have a target reading audience aged 60 and up) so I can only imagine the kind of crowd a book would attract.  Seeing this cover, and consequently judging it, I expected an insipid and dry series of golf tips, stories, and suggestions.  Upon reading the preface to the book, much of what I expected was confirmed.  The author likes golf, his best handicap days are behind him, he has enough free time to read about what he likes, and he has money to spend on trying to compensate his rusty swing with expensive clubs (he constitutes the target audience of the book). 

As I began reading the first chapter, I was taken aback. Without any sort of precursor to the oddity, he dedicated the first segment of the book (reminder: the book is title Golf Dreams) to tea.  Yes, tea the hot beverage. In a detailed sermon that touched upon technique, essence, math, practicality, and snobbishness, the author wrote, “drinking from a cup made cinchy”. *  For the sake if your mental sanity and the point I’m trying to make, I’ll share one sentence. “Without any thought on your part, this syndrome of actions will lead the cup and saucer to descend along a parabolic line whose equation on Cartesian Coördinates is 2x = y^2.”

List of things that are weird in this sentence:

1.     The use of unnecessarily complicated words or phrases.

a.     Syndrome of actions

2.     The mentioning of both the cup, and the saucer

3.     Not clear use of some kind of humor (or just being pretentious)

a.     Descend along a parabolic line

4.     Saying coördinates instead of coordinates

a.     I can perfectly imagine the man on the cover pronouncing every word with an accent that goes with this word.

So, there you have it: a book about…Golf.

*Cinch(y): an extremely easy task