The last drip of the Jack Daniels bottle hung on for dear life, clinging to the plastic as Lonnie Darko clung on to it even tighter, tilted askew on his futon, or as he likes to call it, his bed. It has been a tough past decade for good ol' Lonnie, a fan favorite among the fiery and growing local fan base for the Good Springs Amateur Bowling Competitive League; he calls them his turkeys while they call him their hero and in many regards, he is an American hero. While he isn't a war hero, so no American Sniper, he is an American hero in amateur bowling competitive circles and Good Springs, Tennessee is certainly a regional hotbed when it comes to such activity (and Darko has been dubbed a pin sniper in the lanes by many a toy crane machine repairer.) But it all went downhill after Lonnie ran into his ex wife, Sheila, at the annual GSABCL Championships which are held every year following the completion of the final NASCAR race of the season. Everything was going real swell for Darko and company going into the final round of the championship match - so swell that he was on pace for a 300 so it pretty much couldn't get any more perfect than that, just rip off that Bernie Mac movie and call him Mr. 300 (without any bumpers in there to boot; Darko, a former co-chairman of the GSABCL Bowlers with Bumpers program, had a long and storied history with the gameplay accessory that many people call an effective aid that is fair in competition (you know the famous saying, "All is fair in love and war in the lanes") while others compare it to corking your bat or stealing signs from the pitcher or putting mini trampolines in your Jordans in a well-spirited attempt to be more Like Mike or being like your overserved uncle who is tossing alley oops to himself and throwing it down on all his nieces and nephews on the eight foot hoop at the family reunion after party.) Right in the moment when Lonnie was almost set to toss what could have very well been his final roll of the night, the one for the 300 in the final frame and the perfect round, Sheila came bounding onto lane one which was a few lanes over from the competition. As graceful of a swan dive as it was, 'twas still a swan dive nonetheless, and a painful one for the former kindergarten teacher at that. (She was fired for allowing the children to eat Crayons...where did they get such an idea, you ask? Well, first she ate a box of Crayons in front of the class on a dare from a first grader, so there was that, too - Sheila is not the type of person who will back down from a dare, even if that dare is from someone who is still yet to go through the D.A.R.E. program...but yeah, it's probably for the best that Sheila isn't allowed within four hundred yards of a school anymore, for everyone's sake, even Crayola was starting to get a bad name on account of her brazen antics...I don't think anyone who was in attendance will ever forget that assembly where Sheila sucker punched Lenny the Lion, the adorable school mascot who made the mistake of taunting her after she nearly gave the vice principal a concussion while missing a half court shot for charity (to raise awareness of CTE, in a cruel and ironic twist) by an obscene distance - let's just say, the door to Lenny's den will no longer remain ajar for the Sheilas of the world in addition to remaining closed to most of those who practice dentistry in the upper Midwest.) Yup, Sheila took a magnificent swan dive, Lonnie went and biffed the big roll (he pulled a Biff, if you will), his career went in the gutter along with that ball (as well as the next toss as he was still experiencing some symptoms of PTSD - Post Traumatic Sheila Disorder) and the rest is etched in the rows and columns of the GSABCL record books which can be found in pamphlet form at any gas station, truck stop, rest area and/or wherever you can find pamphlets displayed and distributed in the greater (or the gooder) Good Springs area.
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