Did I Break Your Concentration?

One of my favorite things about senior citizens is when they reach the age of simply not caring about being polite anymore. Apparently, at some point human beings decide that they are no longer going to bite their tongues if something bothers them and begin to let everyone know how they feel - tact be damned. They are going to let you know what they think of a situation, whether or not you asked their opinion. (The question of course, is how old you need to be to reach this level. Some of us wait until our late 80s, while other of us apparently become senior citizens at the age of 25.)

Anyway, because I like to play golf on weekdays, I spend a lot of time around seniors and as such I'm very used to receiving advice I didn't ask for. A few days ago I was at Little Harbor Country Club in Wareham and it was apparently old folk day on the links (even more than normal). At 30, I was easily the youngest person on the course. In fact, I would go far as to say I was the only person playing who was under the age of 60. Now, for those of you who have never played Little Harbor, the course features two split tees. Numbers four and thirteen go off at the same point, followed by five and fourteen also sharing a tee. It can get confusing if you've never played the course before and want to pay no attention to detail (in reality, it is marked fairly clearly). As I got to number four a pair of ladies were arriving at number thirteen. They stood there for a minute, trying to decipher the puzzle that stood before them of exactly where they were meant to be teeing off from. Because I was waiting for the people ahead of me to finish the hole, I had time to point them in the right direction. One of the ladies then mentioned that the spot looked familiar (and it should have, because they played number four just nine holes earlier). I wonder if they had been going in circles all morning.

After finishing up hole number four, I was on the split tee of number five and fourteen, again waiting for the guy ahead of me to finish up. Once he was out of my range I teed up and was in the middle of my backswing when a voice came piercing through my ears, "You're supposed to be on the far tee!" [Sidebar for the non-golfers out there: you should know that 'not talking when someone is in the middle of their backswing' is a rule even the people with the smallest amount of knowledge concerning golf etiquette usually follow.] Because of this interruption my thoughts were not on what I was doing and my drive pathetically rocket off at a 60 degree angle and into the woods. (Really, I'm bad enough on my own. I do not need distractions on top of that to make me play even worse.) I looked to see where the voice came from and saw the two ladies from the previous hole coming off the green and approaching me. You know, the ones who five minutes earlier were asking me directions, making it abundantly clear they didn't know their way around the place and yet who were now telling me where I should be playing from.

"I'm on the far tee," I respond. It's at this point that the woman who spoke up took a moment to actually look around and see what the situation was.
"Oh. Never mind then," she said.

Now, I couldn't get mad because after all she was just trying to help. Plus, like I said, I appreciate the direct approach. However, I would like to think that no matter how old I get I will never reach the point of speaking out before I take a second to see what is going on. Also, in case you were wondering, given the distraction I re-teed and didn't give myself the penalty stroke.