I realize that many people who have never played golf, dislike the game immensely. I harken back to the days when George Carlin complained constantly about all the acreage wasted on the game of golf across the country. I started golfing at the age of 12 with my father and played consistently for 30 years until he was unable to play any longer. We had quite a competition during those years, and I remember a day of grand celebration when I was in my early 20s and I won my first dime from him. I still have that dime framed and hanging in my man cave to this day and every time I look at it makes me smile. I sure do miss him. Some of the funniest sports stories I’ve ever heard involved golfers and I’m going to share a few of them with you today. Let’s get started.
One day Bob Hope was playing golf with Sam Goldwyn, the movie producer. On one hole Goldwyn missed an easy 2-foot putt. He became so angry that he threw his putter away in disgust and walked away. When nobody was looking, Hope picked up the club and stuck it in his own golf bag.
On the next hole, Hope, who was a fine golfer, used the putter Goldwyn had thrown away, and sank a 20-footer. “That’s very good,” Goldwyn said. “Let me see that putter for a minute.”
Goldwyn closely examined the club, took a few practice putts with it and said, “I like this club very much. Will you sell it to me?” “Sure,” Hope replied. “It’ll cost you $50.” Many years later Sam Goldwyn found out that he had paid $50 for a club he had just thrown away.
Bobby Jones was one of the greatest golfers ever, winning dozens of tournaments before he retired in 1930. One day in 1920, playing in the Southern Amateur Tournament at New Orleans, Jones found himself with an unexpected problem.
One of his drives landed inside an old shoe that lay on top of the workman’s wheelbarrow. After deciding not to take a penalty for dropping the ball out of the chute, he found a novel solution. He played the shoe.
The immortal Bobby walloped the shoe, which assumed off the wheelbarrow. The ball flew out of the shoe and kept rolling, finally stopping only a few feet from the green. Jones chipped up to the green and holed out for a par.
Now it’s my turn to add one of my personal stories. My father was quite a good golfer, but he had quite a bad temper as well. We were five holes into our round of golf one afternoon and he was having serious problems with his tee shots. He had a favorite driver that he loved, and that love affair ended that day. As he teed off on the fifth hole he sliced directly into the woods to the right of the fairway. I won’t repeat the string of obscenities I heard as he threw that damn club high up into the trees. It was tangled and mangled forty feet off the ground and remained there for 20 years. As we frequently played that course, we never failed to mention his bad temper and that terrible slice each time we passed that hole. Always lots of laughter and additional curse words of course. He was forced by his physical problems to stop golfing as his retirement neared. My closest friend and I went to the golf course one dark night, climbed that stupid tree and retrieved his mangled club. I had it cleaned and mounted on a lovely walnut plaque which was presented to him at his retirement party. A great night for all concerned and that damn club still hangs in my sister’s house to this day.
Now that I have grandchildren running through the house occasionally I’ve been forced to curb my use of all cusswords. I’ve always loved cursing and swearing but stopping cold-turkey has been tough. I have no doubt they’ll be picking up a few dozen new cuss words at home and especially at daycare. We can only hope they don’t pick up too many of the really good ones for a while yet.
I decided to do a little research into cussing as it applies to what will be their daily lives soon enough. Before I do that I thought I’d give you a short history lesson too. Here’s a few retro cusswords from back in the good old days.
Old School Cussing
Heavens to Betsy
Jumpin’ Jahosafat
Yikes
Gadzooks
Holy cow
Sugar
Dagnabit
flippin’
Geez Louise
Jeez oh man,
Fudge
Eat it … RAW
Hell’s bells
Oh Shoot
Great Caesar’s Ghost
Jiminy Cricket
Holy Mary-Mother of God
They sound so lame to us now but back in the day they got the job done with us kids. My Mom knew all of these and a few more modern words as well. Now lets take a look at cusswords in use in the USA today. Some fool took the time to do a study to determine what states used certain cusswords the most. Here are the results.
Asshole – New England, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Arizona
Bitch – Texas through the Carolinas – Along the coast.
Darn – Most of the Great Plains states.
Shit – Texas to Delaware along the coast.
Fuck – All coastal states, East, West, and South.
Motherfucker – Southwestern states and Maine’s
Before too long our grandchildren will on the Web and getting introduced to Facebook and Twitter and all of the associated idiots who roam there. Here is some information and usage on both of those sites.
Twitter
Detailed work by researchers at Wright State University in Ohio has found that 34.7% of all the swearwords in their sample of 51m tweets were "fuck" or one of its long list of cognates.
In comparison, the second and third most popular swearwords – "shit" and "ass" – accounted for 15.0% and 14.5% respectively, while other highlights included "bitch" (10.3%), "hell" (4.5%), "whore" (1.8%), "dick" (1.7%), "piss" (1.5%) and "pussy" (1.2%). Between them, the top seven make up 90.6% of all the swearing on Twitter.
Facebook
Someday, when aliens are sifting through Facebook data to find out what 21st-century humans thought and cared about, they’re going to see a lot of shit. That’s the most popular swear word on Facebook, according to an analysis by Slate. In the three-day period queried, shit appeared in 10.5 million U.S. Facebook interactions, fuck in 9.5 million, damn in 6.3 million, bitch in 4.5 million, and crap in 2 million.
This next section applies directly to Rap Music. It’s always been known for bad language and we find out now that criticism was totally justified. I feel bad for the fool that had to sit through this terrible music to complete this study. It must have been brutal.
Rap Music
217.7 cuss words-per-album average.
One song from the study had, on average, 13.76 instances of profanity.
Too $hort’s 1985 album Raw, Uncut & X-Rated was the most profane album, clocking 49.8 curse words per song.
The most profane artists per song were The Geto Boys, as they uttered cuss words on average 46.4 times per song. The second-most vulgar artist? Geto Boys’ Scarface, with 33.3 cuss words per song.
Bun B’s song “Some Hoes” had the most instances of profanity in its lyrics with over 113 cuss words. The words “nigga” (51 times) and “ho” (46) make up the majority. However, the study qualifies that Lil Jon’s “Roll Call” is perhaps the most vulgar with 329 cuss words but it was not used in the study.
The most profane year in Hip-Hop from the study was 2001 with 22.66 cuss words per song.
If both grandson’s can last more than fifteen minutes in this cuss filled society without becoming cussing experts it will be nothing short of a miracle. Since I believe that “turn-about is fair play” I’ll just wait until they start cussing on their own then I’ll step in and add a few of mine.
SHIT ! ! !
IF IT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR FACEBOOK, IT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME.
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