Ephraim Titleist Jr.---------
To a young boy, a golf ball is only good for one thing, to cut open and unwind and see how high he can bounce the little rubber thing containing the liquid center off the sidewalk.
Yet others have often wondered who winds that single elastic thread which is at least 5 miles long. Armenian school children is the real answer, of course, though I have dreampt of Rumple Sklitskinner spinning it from a gossamer of latex silk on a magic spinning wheel.
And now I am no longer a curious dreamy boy. All I think about is what club will be forgiving enough to let me get on in two.
Great balls of fire!
ReplyDeleteTit-Leist? hm... define?
ReplyDeleteMy folks redecorated the bedroom. I cut open one such ball, stuck the knife into the centre and splooosh up the new paper!
ReplyDeleteWords were said....
@A. - I can't think of any more puns on your symbols or power so I will have to move on down the fairway.
ReplyDelete@Soubriquet - Titleist? One who wins titles. Presumably by using this expensive ball.
@Adullamite - Brings back memories. Only I got it right in the eye like a grapefruit squirt. I was praying to God to please not let it be some kind of acid that would make me go blind. I guess you had to be there. :)
There is no such word as titleist, (as in one who wins titles).
ReplyDeleteIt is purely a made-up brand-name, not part of any established version of our language. It does NOT mean a winner of titles, it merely means a company or product trademarked 'titleist'.
Even the most rudimentary grounding in English grammar would tell you that if you want to construct such a word, it would have to be hyphenated, as in 'title-ist'.
If you fail to do that, then the unfamiliar reader has no clue as to the meaning or derivation of your invented word, and is free to read it as tit-leist, which to me makes as much sense as your version.
tit tit tit. Ha!
I think what I'm getting at is that I object to corporate entities telling me that a made-up word is to be sounded in the way that they choose, simply because they say so. It's as nonsensical as the artist formerly known as prince, who decided his name was to be a squiggle of his own devising which bore no relationship to any known language. Or the possibly apocryphal story of the stupid woman who named her child Le-a, and was outraged when the school failed to pronounce it 'Ledasha'.
"The dash don't be silent!'
As for golf-ball deconstuction, yes, done that. It seems to be a universal experience for boys to chop golf-balls up. I always used to wonder who first had the idea of taking a little bag of latex and then binding it tightly with miles of thin elastic...
Why would such an idea ever occur to anybody?
Which brings us to the 'superball' a ball that was introduced when I was a kid, made of a black, somewhat crumbly hard rubber. It out-bounced any existing ball, and was hard as a bullet if it hit you. It also had some strange bounce characteristics, which led. if you threw it softly with a little backspin, to it bouncing not away, but back toward the thrower.
I learned this, when the ball bounced unexpectedly back at me, I missed catching it, and it went straight through the glass of our front door.
My father was not exactly pleased.