A small act of kindness… and

a surprisingly firm refusal

I turned 84 the other day.

At that age, birthdays are less about cake and more about accounting. Not financial accounting—I’ve done enough of that—but the quieter kind. You start taking stock of the people who, for reasons still not entirely clear, helped you along the way.

I made a list. It ran past a hundred names.

It began, naturally, with the doctor who delivered me. I assume he did a competent job. I wasn’t an instrument baby, though in retrospect a little mechanical guidance might have improved my sense of direction.

But one of the names that kept coming back to me was Dennis Barrett.

Dennis was my roommate at BYU from 1964 to 1968, when I was studying communications, journalism, business, and French—none of which, I should add, prepared me for Dennis.

We met at The Daily Universe, the campus newspaper. There were maybe twenty-five of us on staff, along with a small army of eager journalism students supplying stories.

It was a wonderful place—busy, competitive, funny, and full of camaraderie. Dennis eventually became editor.

If it hadn’t been for him, I probably never would have become editor myself, and I would have missed one of the great pleasures of my young life.

But that’s not the story.

This is the story.

One spring morning, during our junior year, I got up at six.  I wandered into our little kitchen and found it… occupied.

Not by people. By golf balls.

There were buckets of them. Ten, maybe twelve. Each one seemed packed with fifty or sixty balls. It looked less like a student kitchen and more like a sporting-goods store that had suffered a nervous breakdown.

I poured some cereal and tried not to think too hard about it.

Dennis shuffled in, sleepy-eyed, in the general condition of a man whose conscience had been working the night shift. “What are you up so early for?” 

“I’m going to drive home for a summer job at the Edmonton Journal.”

“I thought that was tomorrow –“

“Dennis,” I said, “why does our kitchen look like the Masters Tournament lost a bet?”

He blinked at me. “Oh,” he said, “I’m a little short of cash.”

Eventually the story emerged. Sometime after midnight, a friend had called to say that an irrigation ditch had broken on a nearby golf course, some of the water traps had drained, and opportunity was knocking.

So naturally, they put on rubber boots and went out into the darkness to recover four or five hundred golf balls.

I nodded, as one does when a man casually admits to harvesting a golf course at one in the morning.

“What are you going to do with them?” I asked.

“They’ll keep me sane while I sell magazine subscriptions all summer,” he said. “That gets me through Christmas. Then I save a little more and finish the school year.”

He still looked troubled.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He said, “My credit card from Mobil is being canceled. If I can’t use that, I may not have enough cash for gas, motels, food, and expenses. I might have to quit school.”

“How much would it take to fix that?”

He said, “About $83.”

Now, in those days, $83 was real money. It wasn’t yacht money, but it was enough to keep a student in school or send him home looking philosophical.

I went into the bedroom and came back with a large glass jar full of coins—quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. It was heavy enough to discourage theft and honest enough to suggest sacrifice.

“There’s about a hundred dollars in here,” I said. “Take it.”

He looked at me carefully. “I can’t pay you back.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I believe in karma. At least I think I do. It all works out somehow.”

He took the jar, then frowned.

“You know what this is, don’t you?” he said. “This is your tithing money. This is the money you’re supposed to give to the Lord.”

“I think the Lord will understand,” I said. “He has broader investments than either of us.”

Dennis considered that.

Then he said, “I’ve never seen anybody as kind and generous as you are.”

“Let’s not rush into sainthood,” I said.

I finished breakfast, picked up my suitcase, and headed for the door.

That’s when I saw it.

Among the hundreds of ordinary golf balls sat one Dunlop.

Now, to most people that would mean nothing. But my father loved Dunlop golf balls. They were made in England and slightly smaller than the American ones. He was convinced that any legal edge, no matter how microscopic, was worth pursuing. He couldn’t easily get them in Canada. To him, a Dunlop golf ball was not just a golf ball. It was a tactical advantage.

So there it was, sitting in that pile like buried treasure in a room full of gravel.

I picked it up.

“Dennis,” I said, “this is a Dunlop.”

“Is it?” he said.

“My father loves these things. You’re taking most of these golf balls with you, right?”

“All of them.”

“Could I have this one?”

He looked at me. Calm. Centered. Barely awake, but morally alert.

“No.”

I stared at him. “No?”

“You said I didn’t owe you anything.”

“I know,” I said. “But I just saved your academic career. I think I’ve earned one golf ball.”

“I need them,” he said. “After selling subscriptions all day, I get tense. I go out into a field and hit golf balls to relax. I need every one of them.”

“One golf ball,” I said, “is not going to determine your emotional future.”

“It might.”

I looked at him for a long moment.  “Dennis,” I said, “you’re a scoundrel.”

He shook his head gently.

“No,” he said. “I’m just holding you to the bargain.”

And with that, I left for Canada—poorer by one hundred dollars and one Dunlop golf ball.

Over the years, Dennis did well. He opened doors for me that I would never have found by myself. When I made that birthday list of people who had helped me over 84 years, Dennis was near the top.

Which just goes to show:

Be generous in life.

Help people when you can.

Give freely.

But for heaven’s sake—get the golf ball in writing.