Pretentious cellphone geeks haunting golf courses

Everyone has a story about aggravating cellphone users, and this is mine. Last summer, while golfing with friends at the challenging Grand Falls, New Brunswick, course in the magnificent splendor of a late St. John Valley summer we were overtaken by one of those extreme-golf nuts who actually runs the fairways, pulling his golf cart and clubs behind as he jogs from shot to shot.

Along about the 12th hole we twigged in to the drill and signaled the masochist to play through. But he just stood on the tee, transfixed, until we finally said the hell with it and moved on, Mister Nice Guys no longer.

Something didn’t seem quite right here, though. The guy had almost literally run us over, and now that we were inviting him to kick in the afterburners and zoom on by he had inexplicably stalled out. Highly trained observer that I am, I looked closer and found the reason: Pacing back and forth much as an expectant father might pace the floor outside the Eastern Maine Medical Center maternity ward, the goober – cellphone to his ear – was lost in deep conversation about A Matter Of Great Consequence.

On the next hole, his important business having been taken care of, the whirlwind swept past, apologizing for any inconvenience he may have caused. No problem, we assured him. Rather than having been inconvenienced we had been royally entertained. We recommended that he add a juggling and sword-swallowing routine to his act and take it on the road.

As he raced off to the next tee my playing partners made a simple request. If things ever got so drove up in their lives that they had to sprint around a golf course while talking on a cellphone between shots would I please just shoot them? Consider it done, I replied, and nailed a neat four-wood approach shot to the green.

Fast-forward to this summer. We are playing golf at our secret spot in Quebec Province (great golfing venues are like great fishing holes – one never discloses their location, for fear the word will spread and they will become overrun by riffraff). We are stuck in line behind a foursome of oblivious chatterboxes who spray their tee shots in four different directions – none of which chances to be straight ahead.

After the fourth guy drives his ball about 30 yards to the left and into the puckerbrush, the traveling horror show subsequently sets off on the day’s big adventure. Just as 30-Yard Man is about to enter the williwags on his ball search-and-rescue mission the cellphone clipped to his belt rings. Instead of ignoring it – or, better yet, chucking it into yonder frog pond – he commences to stand there and talk into the wretched device. My foursome – and those stacked up behind – look on in slack-jawed amazement, the smoke of a slow burn emerging from many sets of ears.

Fortunately, a course marshal arrives to explain to the lunkhead that he may either play golf or talk on his beloved cellphone. But he can’t do both at once. Not here. The marshal corrals the foursome and instructs us to hit away. It occurs to me that playing through a foursome that is only 30 yards off the very first tee must be some kind of modern golfing record, and I am proud to have been a part of it.

Last week as I headed up the interstate, I glanced in my rearview mirror to see a car, perhaps a half-mile back, approaching in the passing lane and closing fast. Massachusetts, of course, in the home stretch of his Boston-to-Houlton run which he no doubt had negotiated entirely in the passing lane. (Since they are going to pass everything in sight, come hell or high water, Massachusetts drivers figure that they might as well keep it in the passing lane at all times, and you can’t fault their logic, highway safety-wise, I suppose).

This bird was moving at 80 mph if he was moving at all, and just before he blew my doors off in passing, I got a glimpse of him – one hand on the wheel and one hand holding a cellphone to his ear, a Very Important Person on a Very Important Mission up amongst the bumpkins.

As you might imagine, I was some impressed. The more so because the situation, like the golf course encounters before, confirmed the validity of Old Dawg Maxim No. 137: All cellphone owners may not be pretentious geeks. But all pretentious geeks definitely own a cellphone.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.