Frisbee as a contact sport

Many relationship experts recommend that couples participate in various leisure activities, even sports, together. The Hero and I try to do this, although perhaps Rearranging Cars in the Parking Lot is not quite the sort of bonding activity the relationship experts have in mind.

Following a few incidences this summer, the Hero has put more of a premium on activities that are safe. Safe for HIM. Safe for him from ME. There was, for instance, the incident of the guillotine Frisbee. To say that I am not very good at Frisbee golf would be to insult giant tortoises everywhere, who would surely be better at it than I. Anyone observing my strategy would conclude that it is this:

1. Locate basket into which Frisbee is intended to land.
2. Do several warm-up swings to get comfortable with the force needed and proper direction.
3. Throw Frisbee in any direction but where the basket is located.
4. Retrieve Frisbee from bushes, swamp, or clump of poison ivy where it has landed.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 until Frisbee has successfully landed in basket or Frisbee partner gives up and heads for home, whichever comes first.

The Hero is very good-natured about this process, even when his patient attempts to help me improve meet with very little success. He has learned to set modest goals for me ("The basket's about 100 yards that way, but aim for that patch of grass two feet away"), and to praise me for small successes ("It hit the rock instead of going into the stream! Great!").

But neither of us was prepared for just how dangerous I could be, until on one hole I aimed straight uphill, gave the Frisbee a mighty heave, and sent it rocketing 180 degrees to my right. It just missed the Hero's head.

A few weeks earlier, my Frisbee had headed right for a friend's leg, striking it rather violently, although it did not cause any major damage. Given that incident, and now the Hero's near limb malfunction, probably my Frisbee privileges should have been revoked on the spot. But after a few words of understanding from the equanimous Hero ("Never do that again"), we decided that perhaps it would be prudent to leave the course while we still had all our limbs intact and did not require advanced medical care. And while we could still remember how to get back to our car, as the designers of this course seemed to have done their best to make directionally challenged people even more directionally challenged.

We enthusiastically told some friends -- one of whom suffered that ill-advised Frisbee blow of mine to her leg -- about this new course that we'd found, and suggested we all go sometime. They were equally enthusiastic. Maybe this time, in the interest of public safety, I'll just throw my Frisbee in a thick patch of briars and leave it there. Better yet, I'll AIM for the thick patch of briars, and maybe it will actually go toward the basket.