I didn’t know from golf carts as a kid, which is (probably a good thing but) too bad because they look like they’d be a lot of fun for the kind of 10-year-old that I was—looking for something more exciting than a bike but intimidated by the idea of an entire car.

A lot of kids in the town where I live now are shuttled around via street-ready golf cart (small town, a lot of older people). Every Halloween, at least five of these open-air buggies trundle up hauling various amounts of kids. It looks cold, but fun. Every summer I’ve been here, I have ridden with the librarian in her family’s golf cart for a town festival parade. Last year there was also a Fourth of July golf carts–only parade, but I didn’t take part in that since we don’t own one.

So most of my golf cart experiences take place on—wait for it—golf courses. Since I golf exclusively with my husband, who hates airplanes and probably trains and every other vehicle he’s not driving, he generally has the run of the thing. Occasionally, the kid will come along for an outing, and then he and I trade off.

But my best golf cart story comes from when I was just dating my husband and he had just introduced me to golf and I felt I needed to practice more than just the few times a week that I saw him. There was a teeny public course about 3 minutes from my house in Florida where I’d go a couple times a week. I got what is likely to be my only hole-in-one for my entire life at that place, which was truly a case of a blind squirrel getting a nut, and only a stranger was there to see it. We were both flabbergasted, since I did literally everything else wrong that day. It was enough to make me go back the next time… which I am pretty sure the day my roommate Heather and I got stranded.

To this day, I’m not sure if it was our fault or that of the maintenance guys. What I do remember is that it was a cloudy morning when we started out, but we took our chances. Heather was an even worse golfer than I was, if that was possible. (It probably wasn’t; we were equally awful.) She didn’t even have clubs; she shared mine. So we spent a lot of time handing off clubs, wandering around in the rough looking for balls, hitting them farther away from the hole, etc. With the threatening weather, nobody else was out, so we were dawdling.

And then it started to rain. It started to rain HARD.  One of those Florida cloudbursts, with thunder and lightning and awful, pounding, can’t see in front of you rain that is surprisingly cold. I don’t remember, but it would not surprise me that we were as far from the clubhouse as one could possibly get on the course. We turned tail and headed for the clubhouse. I think we made it about halfway and the cart just … died. Rolled to a stop, wouldn’t go. Naturally, Heather asked if I was crazy and why I had stopped. Tried the key. Tried reverse. Nada. We both sat there for a moment, weighing whether to sit or go. Should we push the cart under a tree? Should we wait it out? We were already sopped, but Heather was worried about the clubs being a lightning rod. I was worried about the cart being a lightning rod. (Unlike automobiles, the metal in golf carts isn’t enough to disperse a charge, even if the tires do ground the box—which I’m pretty sure is a myth.)

Finally we decided to ditch the cart and head out. We sprinted. Heather howled that she was going to die. She tells me that I howled back that she wasn’t special enough to die in such a freakish way that she’d get in the newspaper. I do not remember saying this, but it does sound like the sort of backhanded encouragement I would dispense, so I believe her.

We got to the clubhouse, threw the keys at the poor kid standing in the doorway watching it rain, and told him where he could find the dumb thing. Then we slogged to my car, tossed the clubs in the back, and went home.

I’m pretty sure my car seats were wet for a couple days after that. But I was back at the course the next day. Gorgeously sunny, a nice breeze, a great day for a walk. But the cart didn’t die that day, and I’ve never been in a cart that died since. Go figure.