Grown-Up Hobbies Are Not Cheap

When I was a kid, my hobby was playing baseball in the backyard with neighborhood friends. We would play all day, every day, for the entire summer. The total cost of my hobby was exact $7.49 (six bucks for a bat, one dollar for a cheap baseball, and 49 cents for a roll of duct tape to repair the bat when it eventually cracked and to wrap around the baseball when the cover started to rip).

Now, many decades later, I don’t really have a hobby anymore — unless you count sitting on the couch and watching TV every evening. So, I thought it might be a good idea to find an activity that doesn’t turn my brain into a big bowl of guacamole, only with less conversational skills.

Unfortunately, I encountered a major problem trying to find a grown-up hobby: I have yet to win the lottery. You see, you can’t have a hobby nowadays unless you’ve won Power Ball or your name is Bezos. Here is a list of some hobbies for adults and their respective costs:

Boating – Owning a boat is a lot like having a cocaine addiction, except it costs a lot more and produces way more anxiety. Small boats cost as much as a BMW automobile; mid-sized boats cost as much as a Maserati; and large boats cost as much as a 7-bedroom colonial on four acres in Greenwich. But the cost of purchasing a boat is only a fraction of the true cost. You also must add in a trailer, the new truck required to pull the boat and trailer, docking fees, gas, insurance, and a team of fulltime mechanics.

Fishing – The cost of fishing is identical to the cost of boating, but you also have to add in a zillion dollars worth of “fishing gear.” Plus, you have to consider the “social cost” of having your hands always smelling like fish guts. Yeah, I’m pretty sure the ladies really dig that.

Snow Skiing – The proper equipment for skiing costs thousands of dollars. Lift tickets are obscenely expensive, and a new Volvo station wagon with a ski rack — which I believe is required by law in certain Yuppie areas of Vermont — is rather pricey these days. But the largest expense about skiing is the fact you have to hire your own personal orthopedic surgeon. Those guys do not work cheap.

Motorcycles – A few of my co-workers are into motorcycles. As best as I can figure, it’s a lot like boating, except when you fall off you don’t go “splash,” instead you go “crunch-crunch, scrape-scrape.” Maybe you can pair-up with a skiing enthusiast and share his surgeon. To give you an idea of the cost of motorcycling, if you want to buy a $12 black tee-shirt, you pay $12. But if you want to buy a $12 black tee-shirt with the Harley-Davidson logo on it, you pay $74. And the tee-shirt is the least expensive item in the world of biking.

Camping – Insects crawl into your nostrils while you sleep. Nuff said.

Golf – The financial cost of clubs, clothing, lessons, and greens fees is outrageous, of course, but the emotional cost of golf is worse. Few people know this, but golf was actually invented by sadistic Nazi scientists to measure how much frustration human beings can endure. Apparently, the answer is “a lot,” based on the number of people I know obsessed with golf.

After analyzing the cost of various grown-up hobbies, there’s only one thing to do. I went to Walmart this morning and bought a bat, a ball, and roll of duct tape. Now I have to round up a few neighborhood kids. And, at my age, an orthopedic surgeon.