Porsche Garrett
Editor in Chief
I hate bowling. It’s a stupid sport and it makes me feel stupid and inadequate, and my hatred of it puts me at a real loss for words beyond stupid. Dad was a real big fan of bowling. One day, Dad said he was going out to bowl with the boys and, I guess, became so engrossed in his game that he’s still playing it thirteen years later.
I don’t get it. You knock down the pins, a machine puts them back up. You knock them down again. The monotony drives me insane. And why are the shoes you have to wear so ugly? How is anyone supposed to enjoy themselves in the attire of a tacky clown? I hate bowling.
But Marissa loves bowling. Marissa was on the bowling team in middle school, high school, and now she’s on the University bowling team. And because I am madly in love with Marissa, but could not put off graduating any longer by cramming in a class that she would be in (her major is art history, I’m in aeronautics) just so I could have an excuse to talk to her about something, even if it was just picking up the pencil she dropped—here I am. I’m on the University bowling team. Whoopee.
Except—not only do I hate bowling, but I am exceptionally bad at bowling. My teammates have tried to correct my form. It seems I must possess a muscle hitherto unfound in any other human being because as I aim to send the ball straight down the lane, my arms inevitably twist, and send the ball with earth-shaking strength in a shuddering bounce that breaks away from my own lane and wreaks havoc across all neighboring games like a pig that has escaped the truck bringing it to slaughter. Not even the child gates could contain my ball’s wrath.
For now, I am simply the water carrier at our team’s matches. The water carrier for the bowling team. The humiliation would be completely insufferable were it not for the velvet touch of Marissa’s palm as she comes back for a bone cracking high-five from her fifth strike in a row. Marissa makes even bowling look dazzling.
After our third match, with me seldomly refilling water bottles and spending the majority of the time on my phone sneakily stealing glances at Marissa two lanes away, she finally came up to me and initiated a conversation. My cheering slightly louder than the rest of the team must have finally stood out to her! She said that, if I wanted, she would try and give me a few pointers about bowling.
And so, there we were. We stayed, just us two, after practice, and I was ecstatic to spend time with Marissa in the grace of her kindness, although I could have done with basking in her glory anywhere that wasn’t still the dingy bowling alley.
What I hate the most about bowling is the score animations. I hate them more than the monotony of it all, I hate them more than the ache in my fingertips, I hate them more than the rank shoes that are never even available in my size. And everytime I come shuffling back from launching my ball, there they are on the screen. The pins and their jeering faces, their bug eyes and their disconnected, gloved hands taunting me. They make me sick.
Marissa was a saint. She called out pointers and once even blissfully adjusted my hips to a better position to help me out. But each time I came back from throwing the ball, there those animated pins were to ruin the euphoria Marissa induced. Taunting me and the effort I was putting in to be around my angel. They danced on their screen and laughed at my best attempt, yet I’d finally managed to knock down three pins. I saw Marissa take a peek at their dancing forms and quietly chuckle. That was it. I’d show them. I was tired of being made a fool of.
This next turn, I let the rage consume me. I channeled it as I squared my stance, I held my breath, I titled my head ever so slightly, and then I just let the ball go. It ripped toward the pins and in an instant they were down. Walking back to the table in a daze I hardly even noticed Marissa cheering for me and the press of her skin against mine as she gave me a side-hug. All my eyes were focused on was the screen. The animated pins couldn’t torment me with their vicious mockery this time. I had won this round of their twisted little game. They needed to respect me as such a victor. They should have been praising my name as a god.
When the pins appeared this time, there was no light in their bugged out eyes, no dopey smiles on their
pinheads. Their gloved hands pointed straight at me. They were all ten of them lined up in a solemn row and underneath them- a date. Today’s date- and a time. Only ten minutes from now. The screen blurred, glitched and then what was on it made me run to the bathroom and puke up the contents of my stomach (two soft pretzels and a large diet coke) into one of the stalls reeking of mildew.
He had been there, on the screen—my father. Trapped beneath the pins in a land where only dim, slanted light shone from the sky of no stars. He cried out to me! Except, he wasn’t crying out for me. There was no recognition in his eyes of me as the child he abandoned all those long years ago. There was no recognition of anything at all! He was delirious, blindly crying out for help from any source. He was swimming in an endless pile of pins, and just as he crested one pile of pins, another was knocked onto his head, bruising him, blood soaking out of his skin, pins poking into his eyes and mouth and choking out his cries of terror, burying him again beneath the red striped menaces.
When the shaking in my legs subsided and the tide of vomit stopped gushing forth from my mouth, I
stood up and exited the bathroom. I knew what I had to do. I calmly walked to the concession stand. I bought an extra large diet coke. I walked back to my bowling lane. I ignored Marissa’s confused glance. I threw the extra large diet coke as hard as I could down the lane. I backed up about ten feet from the start of the lane. I began to run towards it, diving for the diet coke splash and sliding like the most graceful of penguins upon my belly straight for the pins. I vanished into that unknowable place.
He had to be here somewhere. I had to find my father but I couldn’t hear anything over the crashing of
the pins. The scrape of them against each other and the way they jutted into every awkward cranny of my body made me cry out in agony. Where was my father?? I had to keep swimming. The pins kept falling. I kept swimming. The pins just kept falling and falling and falling.
Marissa was largely unaffected by my sudden disappearance. She later went on to win state at regionals
and years later named her first son Turkey after the move that won her that game and the affection of her now husband. Turkey would grow to hate his namesake of bowling and one day, he too would join us. As for now, the pins wait for their turn to knock down another…