Golf: The Meaning of Life

I think I might have skipped around on my tenses, but I'm not sure and if I did how do I fix it? Critiques are gladly accepted.



It is three-thirty in the afternoon. I forgot to eat lunch and my stomach is grumbling. Rummaging through my fridge there are leftover chicken tacos and a cardboard container of Chinese food. Opening my freezer I hope to find something a little more promising; maybe a Totinos pepperoni party pizza. Instead I find a pound of frozen hamburger and a box of blueberry waffles. My stomach protests loudly so I opt for the waffles.
I sit down with two waffles drenched in maple syrup and a tall glass of two percent milk when the phone rings. I disconnected my landline months ago so now I am digging through my purse trying to find my little cell phone. I end up dumping the contents of my purse on the table. Three tubes of lipstick, a package of tissues, a blue ballpoint pen, a roll of Tums, forty-two cents, several crumpled receipts, a pink Sharpie highlighter, my silver Chase Visa, four pieces of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum, and my ringing Nokia cell phone.
“Hello?” I answer breathlessly as if I had run a marathon to find my phone.
“Hey honey!” My mom exclaims from the other end. I wonder what she would say if she knew I were eating waffles in the afternoon.
“Hi Mom,” I sigh as I sit back down to my meal.
“I am taking this new class and it is just so exciting,” her enthusiasm is oozing through the phone line, gagging me like the too sweet syrup on my waffles. My mother is a golf widow. So in an effort to find her own hobby she is always trying something new.
“Oh yeah?” I doubt this new endeavor will last long. My mother has dabbled in real estate, ceramics, horseback riding, Mary Kay, ballroom dancing, and even auto mechanics. “What is your class about?”
“Creating possibilities.”
“Okay,” I take a sip of my milk. It is getting warm and I hate warm milk. “What have you learned so far?” I try a different approach hoping for a more definite answer.
“That life is empty and meaningless.” She sounds too exuberant for such a depressing statement.
“What do you mean?” I’m afraid my mother is a few French fries short of a Happy Meal.
“Life there is no meaning. Where is the meaning?” Yes, she is crazy.
“Look in the dictionary, there is a lot of meaning right there.”
“But we made that up, where is the meaning for our lives?” She wants me to understand, to share in her excitement.
“It is inside of us,” I am really struggling. Isn’t everyone on some sort of quest to find the meaning to life? To say there is none seems a bit extreme.
“If I cut you open I will just find blood, muscles, nerves, and bones. No meaning.”
I think I have finally grasped the concept she is trying to shove on me. “So this class you are taking is saying that meaning is not a tangible thing and therefore it doesn’t exist.”
She pauses and then I can hear the smile in her voice. “Yes!”
“That is ridiculous Mom,” I finish my waffles and take the dish over to the sink to rinse off. “Just because you can’t see something or touch it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”
She sighs loudly and I wonder why I am such a big disappointment to her. “Can’t you see? Life is empty and meaningless.”
“No, I don’t get it.” This woman who I thought I knew so well frustrates me. We were raised in a family that had such strong values like faith, honesty, and love. Here she was telling me that faith meant nothing. “Just because you can’t touch or see air does it mean that it doesn’t exist?”
My mom laughs as if I’m the one who has gone off the deep end. “Oh but you can feel air in your lungs when you breathe it. What I’m trying to get at is that we attach meaning to everything, but it doesn’t really exist.”
“Well of course we attach meaning to everything, otherwise life would be pointless.” I lean against the kitchen counter the phone wedged between my ear and my shoulder. “God didn’t put us on this Earth to live a meaningless life.”
“But when we realize that there really is no meaning, when there is a clean slate, then we can create whatever possibility we want. We can determine what meaning we want for our life because there is none to begin with!” She is ecstatic at this point.
“Sounds like a bunch of liberal bullshit to me.”
My mom sighs obviously offended by my language. Usually, I would apologize but today I am feeling especially defiant. “Well, this class has taught me so much.” She remains her chipper self. “Because I can create any possibility I want for myself I finally know what hobby I am going to take up!”
“Really? What is that?”
“Golf!”

Good job!

I disconnected my landline months ago

It makes her sound like an adult that has her own house. Try replacing 'I' and 'my' with 'we' and 'our'.

Three tubes of lipstick, a package of tissues, a blue ballpoint pen, a roll of Tums, forty-two cents, several crumpled receipts, a pink Sharpie highlighter, my silver Chase Visa, four pieces of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum, and my ringing Nokia cell phone.

That's a list, not a sentence. Other than to point out that her purse is a mess, it isn't nessecary.

like the too sweet

Take out 'too'. Its just an extra word that isn't needed.

My mother is a golf widow. So in an effort to find her own hobby she is always trying something new.

Connect these two sentences. For the record, it is never a good idea to start a sentence with an interjection (Ex: So, if, and, but...).

I lean against the kitchen counter the phone wedged between my ear and my shoulder.

Add a comma right after the word 'counter'.

“Golf!”

I feel bad for the main charactor; I'd hate to hear those words come out of my mom's mouth.

Overall, I think you did a great job. I didn't see any problems with tenses so you should be good there. PM or e-mail me if you have any questions or need help ([url]trulysane2000@yahoo.com[/url] or [url]alwaysawriter@hotmail.com[/url]) and welcome to YWS!

Great piece in my most humble opinion. I disagree with half what Always said but to each their own I guess. I really liked the whole emptying purse thing, I felt it gave a little insight into the MCs life. Same deal with looking for something to eat(cant we all relate ). Mom was certainly an entertaining character. I like how you crafted the dialogue. So often writers try to make phone conversations the same as face to face ones and their simply not, but you definitely pulled it off.

“Well of course we attach meaning to everything, otherwise life would be pointless.” I lean against the kitchen counter the phone wedged between my ear and my shoulder. “God didn’t put us on this Earth to live a meaningless life.”

“Sounds like a bunch of liberal bullshit to me.”

I really liked these lines here, they seemed to fit very well with the character. Just giving the blunt truth of how she see's it.

I got to be honest, I found little I don't like with this piece. I really wish I could come in here and give you thirty different things you could improve but I struggle to find any. My only thing would be that it is so short and there is so little to it that it seems slightly empty but it is what it it.

I didn't find any tense problems, just some nitpicky gramatical errors that I won't annoy you by pointing out. I myslef am a golfer, so I was attracted to this by the title. I was really confused as to why the mother was so hapy for the majority of the story, so you did a great job of projecting the protagonist's frustrations onto the reader. You are very keen on the details, aren't you? I think they are necessary o a good story, and in this case they definitely enriched our idea of who the protagonist is. However, I did feel as if some of the dialogue wasn't presented in a way that people would actually say it. That was my only real problem with this. I actually laughed when I read the ending. Nice job with this.