I'M NOT ALWAYS A SAD SACK

I am not a political writer. At least, it is not my intention to always be writing about this continuously hateful fascist President Elon Musk and VP Trump, but I also never considered myself a grief writer either. Then my husband died and now I write a lot about grief. When life gives you lemonade, make lemons…Oh, you get it. Anyway, today, because I don’t want to keep preaching to the choir, I thought I’d try something new. I thought I would write about the fun things I’ve been up to.

Michael and I spent Saturday afternoon volunteering for one of our favorite charity events, the AIDS Walk Open. For those of you who are new here. The AIDS Walk Open is a mini-golf/pub crawl. This year’s event featured fourteen bars, each with their own mini-golf hole. Teams of four can dress up in costumes (or not) and putt their way through the fourteen bars, ending at Missy B’s for the after party with winner announcements and raffle prizes. It is a full day of hilarity and fun, all for a good cause. I decided a few years ago that I am a better volunteer than a day drinker and I’ve been dragging Michael along to volunteer with me for the last few years. We make a good team. Technically, there is supposed to be a group of three at each hole but the last two years our third either showed up drunk and useless or didn’t show up at all (that was this year).

Last year, not having a third helper was not that big of a deal. Now the morning shift volunteers usually have it pretty easy. Traffic is light but steady. People have yet to reach sloppy drunk state. The afternoon crew needs to be on their toes. This year, we had more than 50% more teams than last year, meaning there were almost one hundred teams this year. My job was keeping score for each team. Michael kept score cards and teams organized. We were so busy wrangling cats that we had very little time for doing the extra stuff like selling the 50/50 raffle tickets or mulligans. Actually…we got good at selling mulligans. You only get six shots to get your ball in the hole (tee-hee). You can buy six mulligans per hole at $5 a pop. If you are flush with cash and or drunk enough, you could be convinced that you could buy your way to a win. At some point, Michael realized that I could not move from spot because I was counting the number of shots it took for each player to get the ball in the hole. His job allowed him to move through the space and keep track of teams coming in the door. He brought me a class of water and said “Drink this!” because he recognized that I was trapped with out food or water. The event has a hard stopping rule of 5:00 PM. At that time, we are supposed to close the hole to players, pack up our volunteer box of score cards and raffle tickets, and drop it off at Missy B’s. At 4:30 PM, Michael stopped accepting any more team cards. We sent people away because he still had five score cards in his hand and we had to get them through before 5:00. We were a little late, but all five teams made it through our hole (tee-hee).

Michael and I had a great time, but we’ve started thinking about next year and recruiting to build our own volunteer team. Someone to wrangle teams. Someone to count scores. Someone to judge costumes and someone to sell raffle tickets (I’m looking at you Jenn). After we dropped off our box with officials at Missy B’s, Michael and drove down the street to get dinner. As we sat down for the first time in the last four hours, we each ordered a beer. Then we started talking about the previous years of this event. I told Michael that Missy B’s is usually the first or the last hole for teams. Then I said “I’ve never made it to Missy B’s in time to play that hole.” I’ve never even seen it. Michael has participated with me at least once as a playing team member and didn’t even know there was mini-golf hole at Missy B’s. He just thought that this was the place everyone went afterwards because it’s the iconic LGTBQ+ bar/club in KCMO. I have never successfully hit all the mini-golf/ bars before the closing at 5:00. Not because I’m too drunk (but for sure real tipsy) but because we always just ran out of time. There was that one time where my drink of choice was a Bloody Mary and I reviewed each bar through out the day. The best one of the day was from Stagecoach Dave’s, the diviest dive bar in Westport. The bartender stuck her whole arm into giant olive jar, grabbed a fist full of olives and threw them in the cup. It was traumatizing to watch, but damn delicious.

That day turned me off Bloody Mary’s for a reasonably long time, understandably.

I only took two pictures on Saturday and they were taken right at the beginning. We had about twenty minutes of a lull between team when we first arrived, but after that we were slammed with teams. I didn’t have time to take pictures. I didn’t have time to even look at my phone to check messages or see a stupid news headline. For four whole hours, Michael and I were completely focused with something other than a screen in front of our faces. And it was really great.

It’s habit I’d like to get into, Saturdays without screens.