We were on the same bowling team for years, but we always stuck to our separate lanes. Not that I didn’t notice him.
At first, I didn’t really go out of my way too much…I just altered my shoe size so we’d match. Every time I squeezed into a 9 ½, I’d waddle over to my lane thinking ‘Could this be the pair?’
I could never help checking out his game. Whenever he bent over to glide his 14-pounder towards the gutter, I’d stand behind Gums McGee and gawk at his tush snuggled in denim (no one ever noticed…Gums tended to deflect attention from himself whenever he smiled). Jarod rarely bowled anything above zero, but every time he turned away from the lane, his sweatbands dripping, looking at the floor in despondence, slipping on his own sweat and banging his elbows against the polished wood, I’d think ‘Come on…get up…get up and let me see that cute tush.’
After a few years his elbows got bad enough that he couldn’t hold a ball anymore, so he had to quit the team. It was a few months later that I ran into him in the beans aisle of the supermarket.
“Hey, beans! I love those!”
“Really? Me too!”
“Wait a minute, don’t you live across the street from me?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, yeah you do. You’re in that big living room with the mounted elk head and the complete encyclopedia Britannica, minus volume 17. You’re right across the sidewalk from my curb. I park there sometimes.”
We shook hands and I helped his cart to a few dozen cans of beans.
“Why do your arms dangle like that?”
“I had my elbows removed. Why do you waddle like that?”
“My toes are permanently curled under my feet.”
Soon after that we moved in together and lived happily, with plenty of toilet paper and exotic ceramic bowls. Until I found out about Dora. Now we’re enemies.
Jarod Kintz