This story has been playing out for three years now, so I’ll try to shorten the telling of it to the essence.

Three years ago, my husband Harold and I started finding golf balls on the school playground that we pass through on our neighborhood dog walks.

Nobody seemed to belong to them, so we started to pick them up, decorate them with figures and messages, and then leave them back on the school yard.

They disappeared, never to be seen again, but we had no idea who was finding them.

At first we put them back out on the lawn right where we had found them.

The next year, we left them up by the school, thinking that they might entertain the students when they found them.

This year, we began placing them at the base of a tree on the side of the playground that bordered our neighborhood. They disappeared from there too, but, again, we had no idea who was finding them.

A couple of weeks ago, at the base of the tree we found a letter! The outside of the envelope said: “Golf Ball Artist. Thank you.” We were so excited!

Here’s what it said:

“Dear Golf Ball Artist,

Thank you for the golf balls. The 2 boys (6 and 4 years old) love them! The boys like the pictures a lot. 1 boy loves horses and the other loves dinosaurs, especially Tyrannosaurus Rex. Also, the one who loves horses loves airplanes.

You are very kind and it’s appreciated.

Anonymous”

Have you ever tried to draw a Tyrannosaurus Rex on a golf ball? Trust me, it ‘ain’t easy’! Harold had to bail me out on that one. But I’m having fun drawing cars and planes and wizards and tents and campfires and easier animals.

File this under “Getting our art out into the world.”

Filed under: Being a Reinventer, Adventures of a Reinventer, Lynne's Reinvention Journey on August 1st, 2009