Parting with plastic brings different results and feelings

By Jenny Cook — For Rattling Chains

A disc’s life starts off in a manufacturing plant somewhere in America, and for the ones that end up in our disc golf bag, each has a story as to how it got there.

Was it purchased at a local disc golf store, won at a tournament, given to you by a friend, or found on a disc golf course? Over time, some of these lucky discs become our go-to discs — our absolute favorites to throw.

So if that disc you simply can’t live without ends up in a murky pond, how long would you spend searching for it? The majority of the disc golf population probably wouldn’t hesitate to grab a rake and start scraping bottom, searching until the sun went down — or came up. I’ve even seen lost-disc flyers
posted at courses with “reward if found” written in big, bold letters.

Facebook and the social forums on dgcourseview.com also allow us to reach out to the locals with pleas, like, “I lost my disc on hole No. 4, in
the rough somewhere. Keep your eyes open for my Valkyrie please! Call if found. Reward!”

We love the plastic that’s in our bag and would do almost anything for it.

There can be risks involved in fighting to get our loved ones back. My husband once found himself in the position of raking the bottom of a pond in search of his putter — his favorite putter.

As he crossed a slick fallen-down log acting as a bridge, he slipped and landed on a branch — X-rays later that night showed he had two broken ribs and a punctured lung. Two weeks later, including three chest tubes and a
thoracotomy, he was released from the hospital. A full recovery has been made since then and up until this last July, his putter stayed in that unforgettable stench of a murky pond in Joliet, Illinois.

The blue Champion Rhyno was recently found among hundreds of other discs and, after a phone call, it made its way back into his hands. His favorite Rhyno now hangs on the wall. Two years later, the story is now complete because of that phone call.

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