07/25/20 2005 FUN AT THE GOLF COURSE — Please excuse my “point of personal privilege.” One evening this week I began to play a few holes about 6:30pm. I had just finished hole #1. The way the course is laid out I had to walk past the tee for hole #9 to get to the tee of hole #2, which is exactly parallel to #9. Three college-age guys had just hit their drives for hole #9 as I walked past their tee. I thought I might have known one of them. Another one of them, trying to be helpful, called out, “Hey, mister, maybe you’re a little confused. This is hole #9. You need to walk over there for hole #2.” I replied, “Thanks, young fella. I guess I must be getting kinda senile. You know, I’ve played at this course several times a week for about six years.” He responded, “Oh, please excuse me. I thought you needed help.”

My drive on #2 was a beauty—over 300 yards, right down the middle (of course, the fairway is downhill and hard as a rock these days, so that helped)! Those guys had each hit 2 shots apiece and my drive was well beyond all three of theirs. One yelled, “Hey, I know you. You’re Mr. Ed, my Statistics professor at UT!” He told his buddies that had been his favorite class of all; he had learned almost as much about the Bible and life in general as statistics. I reminded him that my clear intention from the very beginning was exactly that! We had a really interesting, though brief, conversation about silly and profound things before we parted company. All in all, it was by far my best round of the week!