Winning putts

We were at the miniature golf course in Ocean City and I was dreading what I was about to say, even though I already knew how she would answer.

"Are we keeping score?"

Unlike Charlie Sheen, I have a complicated relationship with winning. (That joke already sounded dated in my head but I still wanted to see how it looked in print. Thanks for the memories, Charlie.) I can be a competitive person, but I'd rather give others a chance to win first before I crush them.

I feel it most when it comes to trivia-related games. Over the years I have retained gobs of information, some of it useful, most of it useless. I like to think I would make a great lifeline on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." (That's two dated references if you're scoring at home.)

I try to walk the fine line between "smart" and "know-it-all" without coming off as a tool. Part of me wants to scream out that James Polk was president during the Mexican-American War, part of me wants to let someone else share the knowledge with the group. My competitive streak is similar when it comes to sports. Well, at least for the one sport where I consider myself an old pro.

I've played miniature golf for as long as I can remember. Summer weekends meant going to Ocean City and playing miniature golf Saturday mornings and many times Sunday on our way home. My brother and I have played every golf course on Coastal Highway dozens, if not hundreds, of times.

And we never kept score, unless our grandfather was with us. He would keep score with his unique system: we shot a 2 on every hole no matter how many strokes we actually took. Mulligans were encouraged, and afterward he bought us sodas. To this day, I can't see orange soda without thinking about golf balls.

That's why scorecard sticklers during a round of miniature golf amaze me as much as the people who bring their own putters or spend minutes standing over and lining up each putt. But I know I'm in the minority, so I simply try not to pay attention when friends want to keep score - even as I secretly want to win.

So when I asked her about keeping score, I already knew I'd have a golf pencil behind my ear for 18 holes. We decided to play one of the newest venues in Ocean City, an indoor track I never played before built where two of my favorite outdoor courses once stood. They paved paradise and put up something slightly less than paradise.

I threw out the score card after we finished, so I don't remember what happened hole-by-hole. (Afterward, however, we did get margaritas with dinner.) What I do remember is around the start of the back-nine she asked me for the score. Hers was probably much higher than mine. At the time I definitely shot more birdies and pars than she did.

What she didn't know was that I was using the Grampa Scoring System. After taking a stroke off here, after honoring her mulligan there but counting mine, I announced she was only down by one shot. The look on her face was a weird mix of anger, shock, irritation and amusement.

"Keep score for real," she said.

So I did. And I won, fair and square. Just like the United States did in the Mexican-American War. Which officially ended in 1848 after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Duh.