S'FORE!

I love being a kid. Or, at the age of 35, I guess I should say that I love being around kids. It gives me an excuse to be a kid again -- or at least it provides a legitimate way to get away with acting like one. Regardless, it's fun being a kid.

On Christmas day, I gave my niece and nephew matching marshmallow guns -- original creations of Catha Duck. They were a hit. Kyle and Kristin and I went out on the fairway behind my parents' house to test 'em out, each with our own Zip-loc baggy of marshmallows.

After a few minutes of aimless firing at each other and a brief contest to see who could shoot theirs across the pond, we came up with the idea of marshmallow golf. (Since I had more experience with the guns, they jumped at the idea of doing something that would not involve my whacking them in the face with marshmallows.)

Here's how it worked: We started on the tee box by each firing our guns in turn. Then, we went to where our respective marshmallows landed and shot from there. We continued this until we made it on the green and shot the marshmallows into the hole. Fortunately, my parents live on a par 3 hole. We each shot a 22. (Actually, Kristin shot a 23 but she refuses to admit it.)

We decided to play the hole backwards from the hole to the tee box. (Again, I think there were trying to avoid any activity in which their faces were my targets.) We all shot a 9 going back. Why the significant improvement in our scores? Well, have you ever tried shooting a marshmallow into the wind? That's what we were up against on the first round. The tailwind helped on the way back.

So, that was part of my Christmas day -- blowing marshmallows through a piece of pipe along with a couple of 11 year olds. Regrettably, I introduced them to the fact that wet marshmallows stick to people. Things got ugly after that.