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I won’t be here next week … so, as a courtesy to those who will use that occasion to celebrate, I’m giving you a heads-up so that you can begin your party planning early. That “Par-tee tyme!” you hear echoing in the distance comes from my wife. Joke’s on her, however, since my absence from this space means that I will be spending the entire week with her. That whimpering you hear … Yes, it’s vacation time and — if the stifling heat and lack of breathable air don’t cause me to shrivel to the bone and burst into flames like Ronny Cox at the end of “Total Recall” — I suspect that at some point during the week I will be seen in public pulling out my mashie niblick. Excuse me a second while I stop my wife from calling the authorities. A “mashie niblick,” for those with dirty minds, is the original name for what has evolved into the 7-iron — a golf club determined to be squarely in the middle of the “mashie” and the “niblick” among the odd-numbered tools that provide hours of leisure and enjoyment for those who stay home while their odd-tool relatives hit the links. (I’d call it a 7-iron, but that seems so cold and calculating for use by those of us who produce content for newspapers, since we are notoriously bad with numbers … and, besides, “mashie niblick” is simply too much fun to say.) When it comes to my golf game, well, I believe the closest comparison would be one of those pigs valued for their ability to root out truffles from deep in the woods … if said pig could also search for them in the high grass, the sand, along service roads, in neighboring backyards, at the bottom of hillsides and in various bodies of water — and sometimes not be able to root them out at all (since some truffle-hunting pigs are more equal than others) … to bend this analogy into trajectories and angles seen only when I launch (if you want to call it that) a tee shot. I once struck a drive into a fence. No, not off of a fence, or over a fence, or under or through a fence … INTO a fence. My father, brother and I were on the first hole of a course that we’d never played. After they teed off, leaving an open fairway for me to dissect, I approximated a swing with a grace last seen when Jim Carrey put on “The Mask” for the first time and smoked a line shot into the hole of a post holding the slats of a nearby split-rail fence. We ruled it an unplayable lie. I had to face the indignity of retrieving that shot, as my father and brother walked ahead — pretending I was just someone they’d been forced to play with for the round — because there are only so many balls in a bag … and I’d need as many as I could get. Golf balls usually can be purchased by the dozen — which is foolish, since there are 18 holes on a course, and who wants to have lost all their truffles before reaching the 13th tee? It’s like that old joke about hot dogs and buns coming in packages of unequal numbers (which I’d retell here, but I’m not sure which contained more and, as was stated, those of us in the content-producing business have enough trouble with math as it is.) I have improved through the years — my golf game, not my math — for which nearby fences are thankful; but it stings when you see how quickly some take to the game. For instance Kim Jong Il, the former leader of North Korea, was said to have shot a world record 34 (that’s 38 under par) during his first-ever round of golf at the 7,700-yard Pyongyang Golf Course … a feat witnessed by 17 bodyguards, and which included (reports vary) anywhere from five to 11 holes in one. I’d say it was an unbelievable achievement, but if you can’t believe a leader of North Korea about his ability to launch shots with deadly accuracy ... who can you trust? Still, a few questions come to mind: About those 17 bodyguard/witnesses, why were they watching Kim Jong Il’s shots, when they conceivably were there to look out for snipers? (Unless there were other bodyguards doing that.) And shouldn’t there have been 18 of them? And what’s the Korean translation for mashie niblick? And can you imagine the poor caddy charged with keeping score — what number does he present to Dear Leader that won’t result in a new sand trap being added to the final hole? Talk about a way to spoil a good walk. Mark Twain was wrong about that, by the way. (Not the spoiled part; many a trek to a golf course has ended in frustration, anger, doubt, questioning the power of faith and asking why the universe hates you.) Golf is a “good walk” in the way getting from the Rogue Valley to the coast is a “fun drive.” It takes longer than you expect, there are always others too slow in front of you and too fast behind you, there are more curves than you expect, more rough patches that you have to maneuver through until — when you get there — your destination is dominated by sand and water. On second thought, maybe I’ll avoid all that and show up at the home of someone holding a party. That “Nooooooooooooo!” you just heard … Mail Tribune senior designer Robert Galvin will be away next week. 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