I work in the pro shop of a local public golf course. I’ve been there for about two months now (a college kid’s summer job), and it’s really a pretty good gig. A bit boring when business is slow, but I can usually find some odd jobs to do to pass the time. Usually this involves some type of cleaning––washing windows, wiping counters, dusting tables, straightening merchandise, writing articles for the footnote so Dustin gets off my case––but sometimes random tasks just get assigned to me. This is particularly true when our lovely course plays host to an outing.

Until now I had dreamt of all the dumb little jobs that go into setting up an outing, but I now know their full extent. The necessities don’t tend to bother me, such as proximity markers for a closest-to-the-pin or long drive contest, but some of these “luxuries” are fairly outlandish. The day before said outing is when I was first introduced to the concept of the cart sign.

I guess I’d seen them before, but had never really given them much thought. Basically they’re half-sheets of paper with each player’s name and starting hole, housed in a plastic case and mounted on the front of each cart. Not really anything special; in fact, I doubt anyone even pays attention to them once s/he’s off and playing. To the course, however, they’re a symbol of the elite. A very big deal. And on this particular day, it was I who was appointed responsible for this very big deal.

List of outing participants at my side, I took to the task of typing each foursome into our computer system by name and starting hole. One hundred and fifty players later, I was finally finished. Now it was time print. A normally easy step of the process of sign-making, today this was complicated, as each sign was to be printed upon special Best Buy-yellow paper emblazoned with the logo of the outing sponsor. To be safe (and figure out how to properly load the paper) I did a test print of only one sign. Unfortunately, the starting hole was covering part of the templated logo, so I had to go back to the computer and reformat seventy-five signs. After another test print, I was ready to go.

Once all of the signs were printed, I folded each in half, sure to check the spelling and starting hole against my original list, and placed each between the hard plastic layers of the holders, and ordered them by hole. When I was finally finished, I looked upon my neatly-stacked work with pride. Here were the fruits of my labor, and they looked good.

The next day at the outing they looked even better, mounted upon each cart. I had wild vision’s of each player’s admiration of my handiwork as they were ushered to their personal cart. My job was done, and it was done well.

It wasn’t until later that evening that I, still at work, saw each of those signs taken off the carts and brought inside, the inserts I had labored so lovingly over to be thrown away. I now took it upon myself to cut those signs into the yellow strips of scrap paper upon which I now write the draft of this article. Cutting into the first one was mildly tragic. I felt like a preschooler forced to tear up her favorite finger painting. Less than twenty-four hours ago these signs had been of major importance, and now here they were, nothing more than scrap. As I cut up these signs, I realized how much in life suffers the same fate. Things that we assign high importance or value to end up practically meaningless later on.

Practically. But not quite completely. Often we think that because something’s function has changed that it is defunct, but this new purpose, though less prestigious, may prove even more important than the original.

After all, if I hadn’t cut up all that scrap paper, what would I use to doodle on at work?