Placing the Order of Your Life

 by Mo Abdelbaki ~

One summer's day, about 50 years ago, my friend Jack and I were walking on the side of the road, the way boys do during summer months. We were bored and wandering through the neighborhood, looking for anything to do.

There was absolutely nothing going on, so we shuffled aimlessly, until suddenly a glimpse of something white in some weeds caught my eye. I bent down and picked it up. It was an old golf ball, caked in dry mud. I couldn't have been more delighted. I licked my fingers and wiped it as clean as a boy cares about. (As I write this, I marvel at the fact that any of us survived.)

Its days as a teed-up ball were over. It was gouged and its cover torn. On a boring, summer’s day, this discarded and useless piece of trash was a treasure demanding to be the center of attention.

Jack said, "I've heard there's a Steelie in the middle of every golf ball."

To boys of a certain age, at a certain time in history, finding a Steelie was like pulling a Picasso out of a dumpster. Steelie's were technically nothing more than ball bearings, but on the playground, they were unobtainable weapons of domination, the light-sabers of the marble world. Only 2 kids in our class owned Steelies and they’d systematically beat us out of our precious taws, cat eyes, aggies and clearies. We may have just been boys, but we played for keeps.

The idea of getting a free Steelie to exact marble revenge would have been enough, but the added prospect of destroying a golf ball was irresistible and the afternoon became an adventure.

I won't belabor the difficulties involved in stripping a golf ball of its covering, but suffice to say that pliers, hacksaw blades and cursing were involved, not to mention brute strength and skinned knuckles. It was all worth it. Once the last piece of white armor was gone, we were rewarded with a wonder that neither one of us had ever seen before, an inner ball comprised of the longest, most tightly-wound rubber band anyone had ever seen.

I began to unwind it and suddenly it took on a life of its own, jumping crazily as yard after yard of tightly wound elastic found freedom. By now, we’d moved to a school playground and were sitting on the swings. Other than creaking, the zip of rubber, an occasional "wow," or a gasp as the ball shot here or there, all was silent.

After what seemed an eternity, the rubber band ran out. With anticipation, we approached the red, rubber orb on the ground in front of us. It was permanently scarred, crisscrossed by its confinement. I picked it up and handed it to Jack. He looked at it for a long time and nodding, handed it back to me. I’d found it. It was my honor.

I reached into my pocket, pulled out my pen knife (it was a different time) and tentatively, with Jack watching closely, stuck the knife into the core, expecting to strike shiny, solid steel. Instead, a goo oozed out.

Jack said, "I've heard that some golf balls have acid in the center and that it can eat your skin off.” Now he tells me.

I sniffed the goo on my hands, wiped it on my jeans and waited for bones to poke through my flesh. Nothing happened, so I began sawing at the ball with the knife. Jack told me I was crazy, but I'd gotten this far and had to know exactly what was inside this thing. The answer turned out to be goo and nothing more.

Disappointed and suddenly bored, I dropped the dissected core and we walked away, leaving an incredible mess on the playground for someone else to deal with.

Over the years, I got pretty good at stripping down a golf ball, but I never found a Steelie. I have no idea whether or not there was ever a steel ball in the middle of any golf ball, or if it was just a myth.

It's funny how that old memory makes sense to me now. There are all sorts of philosophies and ideas about what happens to us eventually; what we’ll find when we get to the core. For some, there's a bright, shiny Steelie to look forward to. Others imagine gooey, caustic acid. It's possible that neither one is right.

All I know for sure is that like unraveling a golf ball, life is sometimes unpredictable, wound with plenty of zip and fraught with occasional snaps or a scraped knuckle or two. It’s also fascinating.

I have no idea what I'll find at the center. To be honest, I don't care, not even a bit.

For me, joy is in the moment, the mystery that comes every day and the realization that losing a few marbles isn’t all that bad.