Okay, so I had one of those days recently. You know the kind, where everything feels a bit off, a bit frustrating. I was wrestling with this new smart TV remote, trying to get it to do something simple, and it just wasn’t cooperating. Buttons everywhere, menus hidden inside menus. I was getting properly fed up, muttering under my breath, the usual stuff when tech decides to be difficult.
Then Golf Just Appeared in My Brain
And right in the middle of jabbing at this unresponsive remote, the thought of golf just popped into my head. Now, I don’t play golf. Never have, not my thing at all. But for some reason, my mind immediately jumped to: “Man, what would Robin Williams have said about this stupid remote?” And that, naturally, snowballed into thinking about what he might have said, or did say, about golf itself. I’ve heard bits and pieces, and you just know his take would be gold.
So, I put the remote down. This became my little project for the next hour or so. My “practice,” if you will, was to try and really dissect golf through what I imagined would be his unique, hilariously frantic perspective. I started just thinking about the whole spectacle of it.
Trying to Channel that Comedic Energy
I began to list out the things he’d likely grab onto with comedic fury:
- The Attire: I mean, come on. Grown folks, often in very serious business during the week, out there in these bright pants, funny hats, and one glove. He’d have a field day with the one glove. “What, is the other hand too good? Does it get a separate car?”
- The Whispering: All that intense silence. The commentators speaking in hushed tones like they’re diffusing a bomb. And then someone in the crowd coughs, and it’s like a major international incident.
- The Tools: A giant bag, heavier than a week’s groceries, filled with all these different clubs. Each one for a slightly different way to mis-hit a tiny white ball. And the ball itself! So small, so eager to get lost.
- The Objective: Whack this tiny thing, again and again, over vast expanses of meticulously maintained lawn, just to get it into a little hole. And then you pick it out and do it all over again. The sheer Sisyphean nature of it!
I could almost hear him, voice cracking, eyes wide, acting out a golfer’s elaborate pre-shot routine – the wiggles, the practice swings, the intense staring – only to shank it into the woods. “It’s not a sport, it’s a cry for help in plaid pants!” he might have screamed.
Watching Golf with New Eyes
Inspired by this internal monologue, I actually pulled up some golf highlights online. But this time, I wasn’t just watching; I was actively looking for the absurdity, the Williams-esque punchlines hidden in plain sight. And boy, did it change things. The way players would walk miles, looking so serious, only to tap the ball two feet. The agony on their faces after a bad shot. The almost religious reverence for the greens. It was all there.
One guy hit his ball into the water. The splash was tiny. His face was tragic. The commentator said something like, “Oh, that’s just unfortunate.” Unfortunate? Robin would have been like, “Unfortunate? The fish are wearing it as a hat! He’s feeding the lake monsters!”
Back to My Own Little World
After immersing myself in this imagined comedic deconstruction of golf, I went back to that smart TV remote. It was still annoying. It still wasn’t doing what I wanted easily. But somehow, the whole endeavor felt a little less monumental in its frustration. Thinking about the grand, elaborate, and often maddening ritual of golf, as seen through the eyes of a comedic genius like Robin Williams, kind of put my trivial remote control battle into perspective.
It didn’t magically fix the remote, no. But I found myself chuckling a bit. My practice for the day turned out to be about finding the humor in human folly, starting with golf and somehow ending up with my remote. It’s funny how a shift in perspective, even an imagined one, can lighten the load. I guess that’s the power of a good laugh, or even just thinking about one.
