This moment needs a dozen pictures or more

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When you are the youngest brother of five boys, you grow accustomed to hand-me-down cleats and previously worn jerseys. You retrieve banged up baseball bats from the garage and happily play with tennis balls that already have had the fuzz beat off them. But one day, you face a seemingly insurmountable challenge. You want to play golf. 

You desperately want to play golf.

You are obsessed with golf. You talk about golf every day. All day long. There is a full set of junior clubs sitting right there in the garage, next to all the other athletic equipment you've always had right when you wanted it. But you have a problem. A big, overwhelming problem. Your big brothers are lefthanded. And you are not.

You eye your father's right-handed clubs. He's 6'4". Chances are very good that, one day, you will be very tall, too. Right now, though, those clubs are too big. And right now you want to play golf.

You hatch money-making schemes: lawn mowing, dog walking, lemonade stands. This is a maddeningly slow process. You begin to worry that the summer is slipping away and you will never have the right clubs to play golf.

And then one afternoon, you are sitting in the restaurant at your grandpa's club, just eating your french fries and gazing out longingly at the greens beyond the big picture window.

And a strange man approaches.

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Are you Nicholas? {You nod, tentatively, and wonder why this strange man is standing so close to you and why he's dragged golf clubs into the restaurant.}

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I'm Jack. I'm the golf pro here. {Um, nice to meet you?}

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Do you like these clubs? {You nod again.}DSC_0710

 

Would you want to keep them? {Who IS this dude and is he crazy? Keep them! You let yourself look at them a little harder. Whoa, those are amazing clubs!}

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Your grandpa says you can have them. {This is some sort of dream. Some sort of really, really good dream. Shake yourself a little. Those are your clubs!} 

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And that golf course just beyond the panes of glass? That's where you'll spend the week learning to play golf.

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Every little boy should have that once-in-a-lifetime perfect day that comes of a grandpa hearing his heart's desire, dreaming his dream with him, and making his fondest wish come true.