Pirate Miniature Golf

One of the funny things about living in a tourist area is that, because you live there, it’s easy to put off doing the tourist activities indefinitely. You can always do it later, the thinking goes, so sometimes you end up waiting perhaps for years for the ideal time.

In Chicago, this was not entirely uncommon. I had students who had lived in the Chicago suburbs for years, for instance, and had not seen the Sears Tower (now supposedly the Willis Tower or some such nonsense), the Field Museum, or Navy Pier. Never mind that people travel from around the world to see these things. Of course, usually, my students weren’t disinterested so much as waiting for the ever elusive perfect moment.

While I have not seen everything that Chicago has to offer, because that would take more than a lifetime, I have seen most of the biggies. However, now on the island, I think I suffer from a fate similar to that of many of my students in Chicago, in that I have not visited many of the tourist hot spots that are often central to a vacationer’s experience here.

In our case, what typically happens is, we decide to wait until the off-season to do something, when the crowds are gone. However, by the time the island is depopulated enough to suit my tastes, it seems like so many of the spots are then closed for the off-season. Our timing is off. Thus we wait for the tourist destinations to reopen in the spring, hoping that next year will be the year that we get our timing right.

Last Friday, we finally got our timing right on one thing. For the first time in Island Family history, we went miniature golfing here. Okay, so I understand that a miniature golf course is not a unique place in the way that the Field Museum is, for example, nor is it a hugely cultural experience in the uppity sense of the word, but it’s still something we wanted to do with the kids and without the crowds.

Our goal was to aim for the window of time between spring break season and summer high season. As it turned out, the course we chose, a pirate-themed one surrounded by palm trees, was sparsely populated, which was ideal for teaching the small people how to play, since this was also their first time playing period.

By the way, on the island, as is the case on many of the islands I’ve visited, pirate themes abound. Basically, we just sort of ignore the fact that pirates were in fact thieves who caused substantial suffering and destruction wherever they went, and focus more on the glamorous side of the pirates’ lives, as told to us by Disney and Johnny Depp. It works surprisingly well if you just don’t think about it too hard. Or at all.

Know what the most bizarre moment of the night was? I’m easily the least-athletic person I know, and, to the best of my memory, I haven’t played miniature golf since high school. And yet, I scored two hole-in-ones that night. My more loquacious half, however, who always does well at just about anything physical, mental or otherwise, scored not one measly little hole-in-one. He’s been strangely silent about the matter since then, which has been throwing me off my center, what with the sudden peace and quiet and all.

No, in all seriousness, I think he was a little distracted trying to keep the kids from falling into the waterfall (refer to the above picture),

teaching them the rules of the game and how to play,

and dealing with our little drama queen, who subsequently lost her will to go on, for reasons none of us, including herself, yet understand.

Then, on Saturday, I was sheepishly telling one of my friends, who appears to be way more accomplished than I am, that we had finally gone miniature golfing here, and she confessed to not having been to what may be the biggest tourist draw here, with the exception of the beach, of course. Like our family has done with many of the tourist attractions, she’s attempted to go in the off-season, but found that it is closed. I am not, for the safety of her stellar reputation, revealing her name or the tourist attraction that she has snubbed thus far. However, she is my new hero. Because now, if other friends give me grief for perhaps being the only mother on the island that waited over six years to take her kids miniature golfing here, I can smile secretively and say, “I know someone even worse.” This may be a slight redefining of the term “hero,” but I’m now comfortable with it.

Oh, wait. It seems actually that I haven’t been to the island’s second biggest tourist attraction either. I guess I’d better keep my mouth shut, at least for a couple more weeks until I can quickly sneak over there when it reopens for the summer.