Shut The Box

I had never even heard of this game until this past week-end with the Yahoo's. There were six of us staying in a two bedroom, two bath villa by the eighteenth fairway, which would have been perfect except that about three hours into our fun (and by fun, I mean massive amounts of alcohol consumption) neither commode was working. Did I mention there were six women and that we were all drinking? No one seemed concerned.

"Oh, just call Ralph. He'll come right over and fix it."

Apparently Ralph was in charge of that sort of thing at this "resort" and the Yahoo's were familiar with his "work".

Sure enough, Ralph and his helper showed up and after thirty minutes of fine-tuning, announced that the toilets were now working...BUT! JUST IN CASE..."the OFFICE is unlocked and you can use the bathroom there if these happen to quit working."

By the time we left the villa to play golf the next morning, we had all made at least one Office visit.

We delivered the bad news to Ralph when we saw him at the clubhouse, and to add insult to injury, we had to tell him that the t.v. wasn't working either. He assured us he'd take care of everything.

Then, there was the GOLF. We were completely and utterly soaked by about the third hole. But we sloshed onward in the rain until we had finished the front nine, then we took a lunch break and returned to the villa for sustenance and dry clothes. By that time, Ralph had fixed the plumbing problem so we were good to go...so to speak.

Like idiots, we all trotted back out after lunch to play the back nine, and I'm not ashamed to admit that on hole number sixteen, when the rain had once again become steady, I had had enough. I picked up my ball and told my team, "I'll be in the bar."

Meanwhile, back at the villa, Ralph had called the cable company, so they came by and powered up our television just in time for us to enjoy the Derby.

On Sunday morning, we watched it rain some more, but when there seemed to be a clearance, we laced up our golf shoes and headed for the first tee. Three of the girls even teed off. But by that time, the rain had started up again, so we said, "No more!" and packed our bags.

Let me just say, it was great to see the Yahoo's. They're a special group of women. Smart. Funny. Compassionate. And, yes, competitive...both in Golf and in Shut the Box.