It’s always real life, fresh from today.

I’m sitting quietly at the driving range with many other enthusiasts, just like every morning.

On the mat next to mine, a gentleman is finishing his lesson with an instructor. I notice, without paying much attention, a French-Thai couple sitting on a bench behind me with a little boy sitting quietly on the bench. The previous lesson is over, and the instructor invites them to come forward.

Apparently, today’s lesson is about teaching the lady, who is a beginner, how to play. The gentleman stands back. I assume he is a golfer because after the lady’s third ball and the instructor’s initial advice, he approaches the instructor to suggest a different correction. Well, the instructor is Thai; like all Thais, he remains very zen, smiles and says nothing.
I think I would have given him a little kick in the legs to send him back to the bench.
Anyway, after the lady had been trying with varying degrees of success for about fifteen minutes, whose turn was it? Take a guess!

Not the gentleman golfer, but the little boy who is about four years old. Dad had bought him two small clubs that were just his size for the occasion. The instructor tried to explain a few basics to him, but the little boy, who was probably a little too young (not everyone can be Tiger Woods), didn’t seem very interested.

Of course, he misses the ball several times before lightly hitting one that heads towards my mat and crosses it.
Fortunately, my long career as a teacher has left me with a few scars. And when there’s a child of that age around, I pay much more attention to what the child is doing than to what I’m doing myself.

So I was able to stop my movement to avoid blinding the poor kid who was running after his ball. Of course, there was no apology from the child’s parents, whom I will refer to by a nickname that suits them well: "HMDM".
Yes, I know, it’s not an easy nickname to bear, but it’s the simplest I could come up with to avoid having to write his first name every time, which is obviously "EighthWonderOfTheWorld".
It is, unfortunately, a modern evil to consider children as kings everywhere, including on a golf driving range, which is still a fairly dangerous place. In short, for safety’s sake, I started playing very short wedge shots until the end of HMDM’s lesson, which didn’t take long, as he was much more interested in chasing balls than trying to hit them with his club.

What do you think these two parents did the whole time their little prodigy was disrupting the driving range?
Yes!!! Well done to those who guessed correctly: they took photos of him, smiling, each with their mobile phone in their hand. They must have taken about 2,500 photos of their little prodigy running between the mats.

Fortunately, no one was injured.
Enjoy your practice session.