The quiet game

Tonight, I played miniature golf with my fantastic four-year-old daughter. It was great - I truly adore her and love spending time with her. She's the kind of kid that makes you laugh and makes you just want to hug her and squeeze her cheeks and take that mental picture of her and hope she never changes. Anyway, we're playing and having a good time and we catch up with the family in front of us. It wasn't hard to do since there were seven of them and seven people couldn't possibly play quickly. Five of them were girls. Ugh, I thought it was hard having two daughters, I can't imagine five! So, we're behind them and I find it cute that the girls are all counting each stroke they take. Yeah, it was cute when they counted to 10 or 12 and then said they lost count and had to start all over again. Obviously, they don't know the miniature golf etiquette of stopping at five strokes. After the seventh hole of waiting for them to do this, I realized that their parents (or the older folks that were with them) didn't tell them to stop. I didn't mind so much since I wasn't in a rush - we were killing time while my oldest girl was at a party. But, it seemed kind of strange that these parents/guardians/whomever didn't tell their girls that they were being a little inconsiderate of the other people playing golf (because by now, others were waiting behind us). And then it struck me as even more strange that they didn't say anything to them at all. For about 14 holes, this guy and gal didn't speak to the girls (or to each other for that matter). They were obviously a family. The woman was looking at the girls but apparently didn't find any reason to open her mouth and talk to them. The guy was playing golf but didn't bother to share in the girls' counting or report his score to them when he was done putting. It just all seemed very odd. And then, as if reading my mind, the woman turns to me and says, "Oh, I'm sorry if we're taking too long. You're being very patient." In my head I'm thinking, way to notice now that we're on the 17th hole! But, I just smiled and said we weren't in a rush. I guess when you have five daughters, you don't need to say anything - they talk enough for the entire family.