Friday was nearly a very bad day for my face.  Twice.

It began with an outing to Top Golf, which was perfectly safe for the portion where my friend Mike and I were swinging clubs at a high rate of speed.  But when we moved on to the putt putt portion of the day, things got a little more precarious.

I’m not one to take the “easy” way on any form of golf course, believing instead that it’s more fun to sometimes try the crazy route.  So when I had a small lead and encountered a rock between me and the hole, I decided to attempt chipping over the obstacle.

You may think that using a public putt putt course putter to do that is not ideal, and you would be right.  But this is America and we try things:

I felt in the moment that the ball came pretty close to my face, but only after seeing the video did I realize how close:

Later in the day I went to the Nats game.  Somewhere in the middle the folks who do the in-game entertainment spotted two empty seats just behind us and decided to use that area to stage a couple of fake Pirates fans for the mascot, Screech, to chase out.  My brother Pat suggested that since we would be in the foreground, he should fake punch me.  Naturally, this was a great idea.

Unfortunately, the people who had tickets in those seats returned, and the fake Pirates fans moved about five rows up and across the aisle.  We were still in the background though, so he stood up, told me (in the blue shirt) to stand up, and went to throw his fake punch:

Our photographer has profusely apologized for missing the key moment.  Apparently she thought it wasn’t recording, and hit the record button again…thus stopping it.  So you’ll just have to wonder if the punch landed.