We Thought It Was a Non-Contact Sport

Convenient...and deadly?

And now, HouStoned presents a public service announcement about a new possible threat to our safety: golf carts.

So this Sunday I set off, like I always do, on a five-mile run around the lovely neighborhood of Walden on Lake Houston in Humble. For those of you who don't know (or don't golf), Walden is a community on a golf course. My parents have lived there for about 10 years, and ever since our move, I've noticed a huge difference between kids today and kids when I was a kid: transportation.

When I was younger, I had two means of getting from point A to point B: wheels (bicycle, skateboard and Rollerblades) and my feet. In Walden, I'm sure the kids have all these things, but their favorite choice is their parents' golf cart (and they wonder why kids today have more weight problems than before). Each day when school lets out, a passerby would think the Shell Open was taking place on the Walden course. A caravan of teenagers cruise the streets, blasting boom boxes from their Club Cars, munching on potato chips and talking on their cell phones (like father, like son).

Anyways, Sunday I learned another downside to the golf cart craze other than a heavier future generation: I was hit by one (a golf cart, not a fat kid).

Coming down the street I was blindsided and almost hit dead-on by some kid who was joyriding with his girlfriend. This could have been an accident. Or maybe the kids were gunning for me Death Race 2000-style, trying to score an extra 20 points in the final stretch.

Luckily, I stopped short, leaving the side of my head and my foot to be the only things hit by the cart. In other words, I was going to be okay. However, being close to the end of a five-mile jog in the heat and humidity fueled my rage as I tore into the kid and started to realize what it means to be an "adult."

I started asking questions like "Why were you riding so fast on the golf course?" and "Why aren't you on a bike?" I also pulled a "Do you have any idea what your recklessness could have caused?" and a "Have you been drinking?" I finished with a "Do your parents know you're speeding around on this thing without any sense of the danger you're putting the community in!?"

In between these questions came answers in the form of yelps by a prepubescent, scared-out-of-his-mind, high-pitched voice that kept saying "I'm sorry, ma'am," "Are you okay, ma'am?" and "Do you need a ride back to your house, ma'am?"

Do I need a ride? I realize I'm not a teenager anymore, but last I checked, 24 was not old. Yet I must have been so mad at this kid that he called me "ma'am" and offered to give me a ride home -- because surely no one that wasn't old would be this upset, or not kicking his ass yet.

I wound up letting him off with a little more than "Be careful, because next time you may not be so lucky," which sounded more like "What the fuck were you thinking? Are you an idiot? What if you had hit someone who cared, like an old person (70 points)?" -- Dusti Rhodes