The meaning of life

Howdy.

I'd like to thank the hundreds of readers who sent e-mails and cards or letters, asking what had happened to my award-winning column.

Sorry about that. I didn't mean to leave y'all hanging. The missus and I took some time off. We filled up the tank of the ole SUV with some of that $4-agallon gas (there's nothing more satisfying than knowing you're putting some oil executive's kid through college) and headed for the mountains, which, in this case, meant the Smoky Mountains — or your greater Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area.

We're not as touristy as we used to be. We've done the chair-lift thing, and the Alpine slide thing, and the ice skating thing, and the tram thing and all the other redneck sorts of things that you can do there. That was back when we were younger and could actually move without hearing bones creak and pulling muscles and stuff. Nowadays, we go just to relax and to get some thinking done. You know, we contemplate the vastness of the universe and ponder the cosmic consciousness.

We did that for a couple of days and then we reached a very profound cosmic conclusion. You can contemplate the vastness of the universe and ponder the cosmic consciousness at home just as easily as you can in a $100-a-night hotel room.

So we came home and continued our thinking. It's so nice when you get up in the morning and the only decision you have to make is whether to watch The Young and the Restless at 6 a.m. or wait and catch the midnight showing on the soap opera channel. Hey, my wife loves her "stories" and I let her watch 'em because that's the kind of loving, dedicated, understanding, caring husband I am. Besides, if I tried to make her choose between me or her "stories," I and my golf clubs would be down at the homeless shelter looking for a room.

So while she was mired in the mystery of the Abbotts and all that intrigue and other hokey baloney, I was out on the golf course being one with nature and it was during this time that suddenly, out of the blue, the meaning of life was revealed to me.

And, for no extra charge other than the 50 cents you plopped down for this newspaper, I'm going to share it with you.

And here it is … … Hot dogs. That's it. Sounds too simple, don't it?

Yeah, that's what I thought too, at first.

But it came to me after I discovered another cosmic truth on Hole No. 16 at The Creek Golf Course in Spartanburg, that one being that I can't hit a 7-wood 190 yards into the wind over water. I had to drown two brand new Callaway golf balls in that pond before the meaning of life suddenly hit me between the eyes like … well, I can't actually come up with an appropriate analogy here (the heel of the hand smacking against one's forehead in the"wow-I-couldhave had-a-V8" fashion comes to mind) but it was just suddenly very clear to me.

Every Saturday after I play golf, my wife fixes me hot dogs when I get home. I know that's not a big deal but it's something I really look forward to on Saturday.

She makes me those hot dogs and sits there while I tell her between bites about my round of golf. And even though she doesn't know the difference between a "duck hook" (she thinks that's what you put on the end of your line when you go waterfowl fishing) and a "power fade" (what happens to Superman when he comes into contact with green kryptonite) she sits there and listens and pretends to get excited when I have played well and shares my pain when I have played poorly.

While those two golf balls were settling to their watery graves, I came to the realization that when this round was over, no matter what my score was or how disappointed I was in the fact that I used to be able to fly a 4-iron 190 yards into the wind and now I can't hit a 7-wood that far, she's still going to be there with those hot dogs and potato chips and a cold Diet Coke after I get out of the shower.

And I began to understand that I actually looked forward to that (not so much the food but her being there when I got home) as much, if not more, than going to play golf on Saturdays.

And that's why I don't mind the soap operas. Or even the shoe shopping, which she did quite a bit of at the outlet stores in Pigeon Forge.

We walked past four elderly men sitting on a bench at the Belz Outlet Mall. One of them had dozed off and it was obvious all four of them were waiting for their wives to finish scouring the stores for bargains.

"Hey boys!" I yelled as I walked by.

They all looked up at me.

"Listen," I told them. "Your wives ain't coming back for y'all, so y'all might as well get on out of here."

They all laughed.

I'll bet all of them at one time or another had come to the realization that looking forward to coming home to that woman they were waiting for and appreciating her patience in listening to their golf stories, or fishing stories, or hunting stories, was just as valuable as the time they spent golfing, or fishing, or hunting.

God bless 'em — and us all.

Now let's observe a moment of silence for those two Callaway golf balls.

Klonie Jordan (editor@gaffneyledger.com) is executive editor of The Gaffney Ledger.