Count Your Blessings

This is Professor
Townhouse, known to me and the pals, as Count

Not many of the pals can compete with Knothead's annoying demeanor, but Count is an exception to the rule. Being a math professor, he is determined to make every part of his life fit into a numerical situation. You might say he is obsessed with numbers.

One Excuse is Not Enough

Now this may work in some areas of life, but not on the golf course. In fact, Count is so exasperating that the pals and I have a secret list of "99 excuses" that we use as reasons for not being able to play golf with him. We have these alibias "numbered" and when we are enjoying a brew at the 19th hole, we casually mention the "number" that we have used recently, so that the other pals won't use the same one for a while. This frustrates Count because he can't understand why we bring up a number in a conversation that has no relevence to anything being discussed.

A Measure of Time

You're probably wondering just what Count could possibly do on the golf course to irritate all the pals. To start with, he measures everything - and I mean everything. He has a little tape in his front pocket that he uses to make sure his tee is the right distance above the ground. He even uses it sometimes to measure the circumference of his golf ball, because he is convinced that all golf balls are not the same size. When he misses a close putt, he measures the hole in the green, just to make sure it was cut to the proper size. All this continues throughout the entire match which takes two hours longer to play than a regular round of golf.

One, Two, Buckle Your Shoe, Three Fore....

We think Count must have memorized too many nursery rhymes as a child. He has the worst possible swing in golf, which he has developed by slowly counting 1, 2, 3, 4 on the backswing and then 1, 2, 3, 4 on the follow thru. But it really messes him up in the middle of his swing, when a golfer on an adjacent hole yells, FORE! That little trick has cost us a few bucks!

For someone with so much intelligence, Count has carried his preciseness to the edge. We truly respect him and appreciate his skills with numbers, but being around him too much can really wear on your nerves. So we have found a solution that eliminates the time we spend with him on the course. We always check Doppler radar before agreeing to play golf and only play with him when there is at least an 80% chance of thunderstorms. One of these days he will probably come up with a mathematic calculation to evaluate the accuracy of weather forecasts and we will have to find a new plan.

Although Count annoys us on the golf course, we enjoy talking with him and discovering the many ways numbers affect our daily lives. If we had known some of these things years ago, we'd have been more interested in math class. But, you know what they say - you're never too old to learn. So click on the numbers icon below for an interesting refresher class, courtesy of Professor Count!

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