Who I am: Greg. 41. Insurance adjuster (auto and property, mostly fender-benders and hail) in the Milwaukee suburbs. Divorced since March of '98 after fourteen years of marriage. One son, who shows up here as T. or "the kid," age 12. I get him every other weekend and Wednesday nights for supper. The rest of the time it's me, a two-bedroom apartment and a refrigerator that hums.

I started this page last winter because a guy at work said writing things down helps. He was right, which I have never told him.

A mulligan, for the non-golfers, is when you hit a lousy shot and take another one without counting the first. You're not supposed to take them in real golf. I'm taking one anyway.

Well, they did it. The U.S. was down 10-6 going into today and everybody at work on Friday had written them off, me included, and T. and I sat on my couch in our socks and watched them come all the way back at Brookline. When the putt on 17 went in and the whole team ran out on the green, the kid jumped up so fast he knocked the pizza box off the coffee table. There is still a pepperoni under the couch somewhere. I'm leaving it there as a trophy.

I'm not going to pretend to be a golf writer. What I'll remember is T. explaining to me how the Saturday matches work, because he read about it in the sports page this morning while I was still asleep. He's twelve. He reads the sports page now. When did that happen?

Here's the part I actually came here to write down.

I drove him back to Karen's (his mom, my ex) at six like always. Her fiance Rick's Buick was in the driveway, like always now. We sat at the curb for a minute because a song was on he wanted to finish (Smash Mouth, don't ask), and then without looking at me he said, "Dad, is it okay if I like Rick? Because I like you more. I just wanted you to know that, in case you were worried."

In case I was worried.

I said something like "Of course it's okay, bud," which is the correct answer and which I meant. He said "Okay," and got his duffel out of the back seat and went up the walk. I drove around the corner and pulled into the gas station and sat there with the engine running until a guy knocked on my window to ask if I was using pump four.

I have been worried. I didn't know it showed. Apparently it shows to a twelve-year-old, which means it probably shows to everybody.

I still don't know what to do with it. Sitting here with the TV off. The pepperoni is still under the couch.

T.'s score this weekend: 41 on the Goat Track (par 27). Personal best. Mulligans taken: two, both mine.

Eleven claims this week. Nine of them from the same grocery store parking lot, where apparently nobody in the county can back out of a space. I have looked at more dented Tauruses this week than any man alive, and I drive one.

The movie with the librarian was last night. I'm going to keep that one to myself for now, if that's all right. Not because anything went wrong. Because I don't want to jinx it.

Too tired. More when I have more.

So. The librarian.

For anybody just tuning in: she answered my ad the week after the Vitamin Lady (see August 24, if you need a laugh at my expense). She left a message in my voicemail box that I played maybe nine times, because she sounded like a real person. She said, "I'm terrible at these, so I'll just say I liked that you mentioned your son first." We talked on the phone twice after Labor Day. Last night we had dinner.

I picked an Italian place on the south side with red-checked tablecloths and candles stuck in the old wine bottles, because I figured if it went badly at least the bread would be good. I wore the blue shirt. I got there twenty minutes early and sat in the car doing the thing where you check your teeth in the rearview mirror.

She works the reference desk at a library in one of the suburbs (I'm not saying which; she'd kill me). She's 38, divorced, no kids, one cat named Dewey, which she says is a librarian joke and she's allowed. She does the Sunday crossword in pen. She laughed at my adjuster stories, including the one about the man who swore up and down that a deer opened his car door. That is the best story I have and I'm glad I spent it on her.

At one point I realized I'd been talking about T. for ten minutes straight and I apologized. She said, "Don't. That's the best part of you so far." I have been chewing on that all day like a toothpick.

We closed the place. They were putting the chairs up on the tables around us. I walked her to her car and we shook hands, and then she laughed and said "Oh, for Pete's sake," and gave me a hug. That's it. That's the whole story. I'm 41 years old and I drove home with the radio off like I was seventeen.

Called her tonight to say thanks. We're going to a movie Friday. She wants to see the new Kevin Costner baseball one that opens this week. I would see anything.

T. made his first par today.

Hole 6 at the Goat Track is 118 yards over a pond the size of a hot tub that has, so far this summer, eaten eleven of our golf balls. I counted. There's a heron that stands on the far side and watches us like a disappointed gym teacher. T. took out the 9 iron (my old one, cut down two inches at the hardware store, with a new grip he picked out himself; it's purple) and he did the thing I've been telling him since July. Head down, slow back, let the club do the work. He actually did it. The ball went up, came down on the green, and rolled to maybe twenty feet.

Then he two-putted. A par. On six. Over the pond. I made a noise I have not made since the Packers won the Super Bowl. The heron left.

He was very cool about it for about four seconds and then he did a little dance on the green that I will be describing at his wedding.

He shot 44 for the nine. He's started keeping his own scorecard, which means he's started keeping mine, which is not great news for me.

Hot dogs for supper. He fell asleep on the couch during a movie he picked, which happens every single time he picks the movie. When I went to turn off his light I saw he'd finally put something up on the wall of his room. It's today's scorecard. Thumbtacked right over the bed.

T.'s score: 44. Mulligans taken: none by him. He's getting proud.

Labor Day. Not my weekend. Karen's family does a thing at her brother's cottage up north every year and T. goes, which is right, and which I used to go to, which is the part I keep bumping into like a coffee table in the dark.

So here is what a free man does with a holiday. I grilled two brats on the little Weber on my balcony and ate them both standing up. I washed the car. I watched about an hour of the Jerry Lewis telethon, which I have not done since I was a kid, and I called in twenty bucks, which is either generous or a sign of something.

Then I did something brave. I called the librarian back. She'd left a message in my box last week and I have been carrying it around like a lottery ticket I was afraid to check. She picked up. We talked for an hour and ten minutes (I looked at the microwave clock). About nothing: her cat, my job, why nobody over 35 should be allowed to answer a personal ad, which we agreed on. We're going to have dinner. An actual dinner, with a reservation.

Mom called at four to ask if I was eating. I said I had two brats. She said that's not a meal, that's a snack. She's 70. She's right about everything.

Wednesday supper with T. Chinese, his pick, same as always: sesame chicken, no vegetables, don't even try. When I dropped him off, Karen came out on the porch and asked if I had a minute.

She wanted to tell me herself about the wedding. She was upset T. beat her to it. I said he's twelve, he's a news service, it's fine. It's in November. Small. At her church. T. is going to stand up there with them, and she wanted to know if I was okay with that.

I said yes. It's the truth, mostly. Rick is kind to my son. That is really all a person can ask for, and more than some people get.

We stood on that porch for forty minutes. It was the best conversation Karen and I have had in maybe four years. We were good at being married for about ten years and then we weren't, and it turns out we're pretty good at being divorced, which nobody tells you is a skill.

At the end she said, "You should meet somebody, Greg." I didn't tell her about the voicemail box. Some things you keep.

T. told me in the car. We were on the way to the Goat Track Saturday morning and he was fooling with the radio and he said, very casual, "Mom and Rick are getting married. In November. I'm not supposed to tell you yet. Mom wants to."

I said "Oh." Then I said, "Well, that's good news, bud," because my father raised me right, and because it is good news for him: a house with two grownups in it who aren't mad at each other.

Then we played nine holes and I don't remember one shot I hit.

On the eighth tee he said, "Are you mad?" I said no. He said, "You're swinging mad." That's a thing I say to him. The kid pays attention. I'd forgotten how much.

Karen and I separated the fall before last. I knew this was coming, the way you know about a dentist appointment. It still landed like one.

The rest of the weekend was fine. Better than fine. He has decided he is going to be on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire someday, and he quizzed me the whole way home from the frozen custard stand. I did not make it past $500. It turns out I don't know my state capitals. He is a funny kid. I don't know where he gets it. Karen, probably.

Score: T. 51, me 49, and I'm not proud of it. Mulligans taken: I lost count.

I just got home from my first date since 1983.

Let me set the scene. The ad ran Sunday and by Monday night I had six messages in the voicemail box. Two were hang-ups. One was a very nice woman who turned out to be 68 and looking for a bridge partner. I considered it. One was, I am pretty sure, my buddy Dale disguising his voice. That left two, and one of them I will forever think of as the Vitamin Lady.

She sounded great on the phone. She suggested coffee at a place in a strip mall off Highway 100. I got there early. I had a plan: one coffee, ask good questions, don't talk about the divorce, don't talk about adjusting claims, which is boring, and don't talk about golf, which is more boring.

She arrived with a three-ring binder.

For fifteen minutes it was a regular conversation. Then she asked if I ever felt tired in the afternoons. I said sure, I'm 41. She opened the binder. Inside the binder were vitamins. Not actual vitamins. Pictures of vitamins, and charts, and a drawing shaped like a pyramid that showed how if I signed up two friends and they each signed up two friends, by Christmas I could quit my job.

I want to be honest with you all: I bought a bottle. I don't know why. Politeness. Wisconsin. Forty dollars.

She was very nice about it. She said she'd put me down as a "maybe." I said that was fair, I'm a maybe on most things.

Dale is going to laugh until he's sick. I'm not telling Dale.

Taking one of the vitamins right now. I feel the same.

Okay. I did it. I placed a personal ad.

The Sunday paper runs them free if you keep it short, and they give you a voicemail box with a code where women can call in and leave you a message. (It costs them by the minute to call, which I think is terrible, and which I think also means anybody who calls is either serious or rich.)

Here's what I wrote, after nine drafts on a legal pad at the kitchen table:

DWM, 41, NS, insurance guy, dad of a great 12-yr-old. Bad golfer, good listener. Likes fish fry, old movies, Sunday drives. ISO kind woman who laughs easy. No games.

"No games" was Dale's idea. Dale has been divorced twice, so I don't know why I listen to him.

Then you have to record a greeting for your box. I recorded it eleven times. On the first one I sounded like I was reading a hostage statement. On the fifth one I sounded like a radio DJ. On the ninth one I laughed in the middle and I almost kept that one. I kept the eleventh. It's fine. It's a man saying his name is Greg and he'll call you back.

It runs Sunday. I'm going to be sick.

Everybody at the office is talking about the new Regis show. Dale says he'd use his Phone-a-Friend on me for insurance questions. I said Dale, nobody in the history of the world has needed a lifeline for insurance. He said, that's what you think.

Kid weekend.

Saturday morning: the Goat Track. For those who haven't been reading since July, the Goat Track is my name for a nine-hole par-3 course out on the county road. Longest hole is 140 yards. The greens have bald spots. Eight dollars for adults, five for juniors, and the man in the clubhouse (a shed) doesn't care if you take all morning. It is the perfect golf course for a man with no game and a son with no patience.

T. is getting better. He's finally stopped trying to kill the ball. I told him to swing like he's tossing a bag of garbage into the dumpster: easy, all the way through. Something about that clicked for him, which probably says something about our household. He shot a 58. I told him I shot a 62 my first time, which is a lie. It was worse.

Saturday night we went to the movies. He wanted to see The Sixth Sense. His mother said absolutely not, and I agree with his mother, which he considers a betrayal. So we saw The Iron Giant instead. He complained in the lobby that it was a cartoon for babies.

Then he didn't say a word the whole drive home, and neither did I, because I am a 41-year-old insurance adjuster and I cried at a cartoon about a robot. In the dark. Next to my son. I think he saw. He never said anything about it, which is the nicest thing anybody has done for me in a month.

T.'s score: 58. Mulligans: he took four and I let him.

Child support math, because it's the first Wednesday of the month and that's when I do the checkbook.

In Wisconsin it's 17 percent of your gross for one child. That's the rule. I don't argue with it. I'd pay 40 percent if it kept him in the same house with the same friends and the same bike route. But I like to know where the money goes (it's my job, after all), so here's the month:

Take-home ............ about $2,350
Child support ........ $609 (comes out automatic)
Rent ................. $640, two bedrooms
Car payment .......... $289, two years to go
T.'s health insurance through my work
Groceries, me alone .. embarrassing, mostly frozen pizza
Groceries, kid weekend triple (he eats like a Labrador)

Nobody's starving. I'm fine. I'm not writing this to complain. I'm writing it because I sat at the kitchen table tonight with the calculator and did the numbers and then just sat there for a while, because the apartment is so quiet on a Wednesday after I drop him off. It's the quietest place I have ever lived. You can hear the refrigerator making decisions.

The second bedroom is why the rent is $640 and not $495. A kid needs his own room, even if he's only in it four nights a month. It has his Brewers bedspread and a lamp and a little TV and nothing on the walls. I asked him if he wanted a poster. He said he'll do it himself, when he knows what he likes.

Fair enough, bud. Me too.