The Ingenious Ways People Sit
Okay, this post is actually more about my day at a PGA golf tournament than the ways people sit, but those ingenious contraptions were in fact a large part of my wide-eyed enjoyment.
I had watched golf tournaments on TV, but nothing prepared me for the tremendous rush of attending such an event in person! The celebrity players, the TV cameras, photographers, the thousands of enthusiastic fans, all filling the air with tremendous energy and cheer. The beer and wine flow freely, and the pizza is the tastiest! And no matter how dense the crowd, one can always finagle a good spot from which to watch a smoking drive, or a fairway shot that winds up in the stratosphere.
Finding a place to sit, however, is problematic. The rule of the golf course is you can bring a chair but you cannot leave it unattended, which means you carry it from hole to hole. If you want to be comfy, bring a nice big lawn chair, and I did indeed spot a few hardy individuals with such furniture strapped to their backs. I spotted tripod collapsible stools, legless “canoe” seats, armless and legless “stadium” seats – some of which even came with attached umbrellas and cup holders! I even saw people sitting on cardboard boxes and plastic grocery crates. The minimalists, of course, brought those strange little sticks with the two flaps that fold out – as if that would hold MY derriere! Handy to carry, yes, but what if you unwittingly plant your tripod in soft soil. You sit, down goes the pole into the earth, and there you are smacksaddle on the grass. Another problem is that golf courses are hilly. You find very little flat ground around a tee-box or green. We were gathered at the tenth green to watch golf legend Lee Trevino sink a putt when the lady in front of me put her tiny little folding chair on the grass, sat herself down, and promptly fell over backwards, her feet shooting up in the air. Down the hill she tumbled, taking me and several others with her, like bowling pins.
I missed Trevino’s putt.
