Today was an absolutely beautiful day in Northern California. I woke to a leisurely morning, since, hey, I live in Leisure Town. I sat on my porch and drank coffee in the sunlight while I watched little clouds form over the coastal range.

At 11am I grabbed my golf clubs and drove to Scott’s house in Roseville. I now live 45 minutes away. Every year it seems I move closer and closer to Scott. One day I’ll get it right and just flat out move to Roseville. But I digress.

When I arrived Scott decided that beer was on the menu, so off we went. We sat at the bar at BJ’s pizza across the street from the Galleria mall and had lunch.

We only had one beer each. Amazing, isn’t it? We sipped our beers and talked about how we don’t drink as much as we used to. How we don’t have alcohol in the house any more. How we haven’t had a beer in months. How we don’t like getting all drunked up anymore because it takes us too long to recover. How we don’t like the way we feel the next day. We nursed those beers for an hour and went on and on and on about how we just don’t drink that much these days.

Now it’s time for golf. But, you see, there’s a slight problem. We don’t have any beer. You can’t play golf without beer. And if you buy beer at the golf course it’s like $5 for one can of Coors Light. Well, shit, dude. We need to stop and buy beers.

And since we don’t drink as much as we used to we only bought an 18 pack of Coors Light. Because, it’s on sale. And when it’s on sale it’s OK to buy. It doesn’t make any sense to buy *just* a six pack when it’s not on sale. Buy the 18 pack for just a few dollars more. Even though we don’t drink as much as we used to.

So at the golf course we check in a little early. We decided to sit on the patio and have a beer before our round. You know, to warm up. Some people hit a small bucket of balls or putt–but not us, oh no. We have warm up beers. But only one, because we don’t drink that much now.

“I’m not going to drink that much today dude,” Scott tells me. “I play so much better when I’m not drunk.” Go figure.

“Yeah, I want to play good today,” I reply. “I’m just going to have a few beers.”

The sun is shining and there is a slight breeze. It’s a perfect day for golf. It’s about 72 degrees–not too hot, not too cool, just perfect.

We tee off and my first shot goes about 10 feet. Scott’s first ball goes flying off into the woods.

“Ahhhhh! It feels so good to be out here playing golf with my friend!” Scott says.

“Yeah, I feel great! I think I’ll have one more beer!” I say.

“That’s a great idea! I’ll have one with ya!” says Scott. “But just a couple more.”

And so it begins.

These beers started to feel better and better. Our game improved slightly at first, but quickly went downhill. By the time we made the turn between the 9th and 10th hole that 18 pack of Coors Light was just about gone.

We stopped at the bar again and had a tallboy on the patio. Scott is starting to flop around, flailing his arms vehemently as he comments on the beautiful day and how great it is to be out here and how good these beers taste!

Around hole #13 the “You Jackass!” stuff begins. I hit three balls off the tee into the water. Scott laughs like a hyena between calling me a jackass. But Scott can’t seem to hit anything but trees. Tree after tree after tree he hits. And he is jackass between my sips of beer.

We drive aimlessly on the fairways looking in vain for our balls. I’ve already lost an entire case of balls.

We start drunk dialing friends. We get Dave on the phone and yell at him for awhile, telling him how drunk we are and how great it is to be out here playing golf and how much we miss him and wish he was here.

We’re out of beer so we have to stop the beer cart girl every time she passes us so we can buy more beer. It’s quite expensive but that doesn’t matter on a day like this, because these beers taste so good and we don’t drink like we used to.

We’re not even trying any more. Scott is swinging the club with one hand because he doesn’t want to put down his beer. We’re cackling and shouting, “YOU JACKASS” at each other. Scott runs over my foot and I hop around the fairway clutching my injured toe. Scott flops out of the golf card and rolls around laughing.

By the end of the round we’ve spent way too much money on beer at the golf course because we didn’t buy enough beer at the store. And we need more beer.

“Let’s call Clover!” Scott decides. After a short conversation Clover has agreed to meet us back at Scott’s house in 5 minutes, because the golf course is that close to Scott’s house. The party must go on.

“I thought we didn’t drink this much any more, dude,” I say to Scott. He just looks at me with a dumb grin on his face, saying nothing. And then…

“Ahhhh fuck it! Life’s too short, dude! You gotta enjoy yourself while you can!” Scott yells, arms flailing.

I couldn’t agree more.