We played the babes of the bowling alley last Tuesday night. Usually they bowl in pyjamas. Tonight was a normal clothing affair, though. Mid twenties i would say, all of them. The rigours of age had yet to wear them down to the craggy, hump-backed crones that typically inhabit the bowling alley ecosystem.

The first of the three young ladies was a feisty brunette. Got some kind of pissed off when the balls weren’t cooperating. Who doesn’t like an angry woman? Especially one who takes her frustrations out on innocent balls.

Then there was a cute blonde with great little shoulder dimples that I know some of you lot would appreciate very much so. She was not much good at all at bowling but had a great attitude about it. A good outlook when faced with a disagreeable task goes a long way in a woman, as we all know.

The third gal was a classic, elegant kind of brunette. A good bowler, she had a nice hook to her ball but was a bit off that night, she said. I’ve heard that “headache” yarn enough to be wary about its truthfulness, mind you.

Now take those descriptions and adjust the resulting mind-picture by a factor of 1 bowling alley. That’s the ticket. Now you’re seeing what I see. Get out of my head, Cusack!

And then the fourth member was some fella. Did the no-thumb bowling thing. Looked like he was going two-handed until just before the release. He was the only one wearing pyjamas that night (clearly not in the group text) and was knocking a lot of pins down but other than that garnered very little attention.

In game one our own lead girl blew away her average and led everyone else on the team by almost 50 points. She basically kept pace with mister fancy bowl pyjama pants and, with the help of their very bad bowler (and my whopping 124 points), we squeaked out an 878-874 victory. Two points in the Gutterfingers’ bag, earned the hard way.

In the follow up our top gal came out hard-hooking and fell right on her face. She managed to perfectly halve her first game score from 170 to 85, before the handicap. I kept mine steady at 127 and the other two dumb-dumbs on the squad increased their points but we couldn’t make up for the drop in production from our lead-off spot and took the loss, 864-826.

Facing a rubber match and the prospect of going home with only 2 points for the first game win, my friend had a brilliant and very dangerous plan. Since his wife had arrived at bowling in a sour mood and proceeded to bowl a top-notch game, he figured he would just piss her off in the third game to boost our team’s prospects. He’s a brave man, but stupid. It remains to be seen if he’ll be at the game tonight.

Worst thing about that strategy is that is that it didn’t work worth a hill of beans. Really bad call on his part. She still bowled junk but us ‘men’ all upped our games by about 10-15 pins to get us across the finish line with a 26 point winning margin. Unfortunately, our total of 2599 was short of theirs by a scant 8 points and we ended up with only 4 of a possible 7 points on the night. After dropping to 6th of 18 teams last week — and still worst in straight bowling scores — the Fingers might have fallen right down that greasy ladder into the meaty middle of the standings. It’s moist there and it stinks.  

Tonight, though, we right the ship with whisky and beer! And if that fails we’ll just get drunk and lose the goddamn bowling match, I guess. To the gutters we go!