Guttersnipe

One late morning last week, seated in my motor-carriage and travelling to-wards a local restaurant in search of sustenance to break the night’s fast, I spotted a chunk of slush in the roadway. It being almost directly in my tire’s path I decided that the best slush is mushed slush and drove over it. I was then, of course, shocked when the expected sound and feel of my radial crushing the slush to mush was instead a thumping crunch of a lump. That grey chunk of gunk was no hunk of slush but a goddamned squirrel. It’s tiny, fluffy corpse now mashed into pulp by 4,000 pounds of Detroit steel. Shucks.

On the return voyage I passed this same unfortunate rodent. Still lying in the same spot. Its friends and family surely watching the endless horror from above. Either he fell from the overhanging oak or was taking his chances collecting acorns off the road. As bad luck would have it a pick-up truck was approaching in the opposite direction and he, as I before him, ground that little tree rat even further into the asphalt. Couldn’t blame the guy. It really did look just like a pile of slush. I just hope it wasn’t one of the half dozen or so squirrels who frequent my back yard and the generous offerings of the walnut tree that resides there. Those guys are all right.

God speed, you nickel-toothed little bastard. We hardly knew ye.

Speaking of being crushed into oblivion, we had a bowling game to play last week. The previous week’s good showing had us up to #2 on the leaderboard but that didn’t seem to matter a lick to the opposing team.

We were up against a foursome of well-aged bowlers. As usual, there was at least one married couple. Perhaps two if the lady was indignant that way and kept her own name. They were nice folks. Too nice in a way. That way was by cheering on our good rolls and using our first names even though we had just met them and didn’t even give them our names. Just went off the screen. Still seemed odd to me.

We didn’t have high hopes. And by “we” I mean just Lily Liver and me. Our other half, the married couple, had a rough weekend of kids and life and all that ragged bullshit and tapped out for the evening. The league uses 90% of the average when someone is absent and they have eerily identical numbers so we got 104s from them for each game. Probably still better then having one of our semi-literate knuckle-dragging friends substitute on short notice.

I started off in a bad funk. Pathetic, really. I got one single spare all game. Lily pulled off a 171 to top his own best score of the year but this was not nearly enough to overcome the overfamiliar seniors. Not by a long shot. They clobbered us by 70 points even with the handicap. It was almost 100 by the real scores.

I picked up my sagging ball skills in the second game with a decent 148. I spared every frame but one this time, in some sort of mirror reality of mediocrity. Lily, on the other hand, got himself distracted whining about the chairs – as he is wont to do nearly every single week – and stumbled to a 126. The wayward adult child support system we were up against took their foot off the gas but still beat us by 30.

Game three was our last chance at retaining some sort of dignity. While that didn’t happen, we did manage to get some points. Lily, now distracted by some apparently delectable Birria tacos, only managed 130 but with my 162 and the ninety per centers we managed to pull a wet, stretchy trash bag of a moral victory out of the garbage bin of whatever week of bowling it was. Our 861 total was enough to get us the last game by 25 and earn 2 of a possible 7 points on the week.

The standings are up and our 2nd place position is already no more. We’re back to 5th where we seemingly belong. Still the worst bowlers in the league but if we can keep improving by modest increments and not just get sick of the whole thing we might have a chance at a few prizes at the end here. Whenever that sweet release is on tap.

Have a nice Tuesday and look both ways before you grab those nuts.