Our old home had a unfinished basement lengthy enough that you could play hockey in it – or bowl. And Brian and I, being the bowling sorts, decided to do just that one day. We grabbed this old 16 lb monster of a ball from out of a pleather bag covered in dust from the Carter administration and set about.
Now, I’ll pause here to note that we were young.
We had no bowling pins because who would have bowling pins? What we did have were many long abandoned half-full paint cans. With lids as tight as a childproof bottle of Tylenol, we stacked them into a pyramid.
I think we each took two turns before the inevitable occurred and we had to hope mom and dad wouldn’t notice a St. Bernard sized splotch of pink paint on the concrete wall.
They noticed.
They also weren’t thrilled that a few feet down from the pink bomb, I’d used permanent markers to draw a 5 foot tall Wolverine with one blue glove and one turquoise.
I don’t think they were upset by the mismatched glove color though, but 20 years later when the kind family of Pakistani doctors were getting ready to make an offer on the place after Dad died, I felt a bit of shame that my art didn’t represent my truest vision.
Loser
Idiot