This past Saturday I had brunch for Mother’s Day with my in-laws including Jon’s mother and all three of his sisters. Halfway through a quiche his youngest sister told me to “ask him about the bowling ball.” This was after someone had already told the story about Jon and the gun and how he stopped traffic between Reno and Salt Lake City because the gun had been fired repeatedly across the desert.
Who is this man that I married?
I know NOTHING about a gun or a bowling ball, so when I got home I asked, “What’s this about a bowling ball?”
Jon looked puzzled thinking he had already informed me about the bowling ball prior to his sister’s spilling of the bowling ball beans.
“Oh, yeah, the bowling ball. Jack and I used to throw it out of the car to see if we could break it in half.”
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “You married this man willingly.” BUT HAD I KNOWN ABOUT THE BOWLING BALL, I totally would have included a clause in our vows that explicitly specified, “Thou shalt not throw bowling balls from a moving vehicle DURING THE COURSE OF OUR MARRIAGE WHICH MEANS YOU WILL NEVER THROW A BOWLING BALL AGAIN.”
Jon explained that he and his friend, Jack, used to get into his car with a bowling ball with the express purpose of eventually throwing that ball out the window onto a curb to see if they could break it into pieces. He assured me that they always threw it when no one was around SO THAT THEY WOULDN’T KILL ANYONE, say, with a drive-by bowling ball.
“Did it work?” I was intrigued by his nerve, by his balls, if you will.
“Well, not until Jack attached an anchor to the bowling ball. Only then did we see results.”
“AN ANCHOR?” I felt deceived. Who was this man who threw bowling balls? THE FATHER OF MY CHILD? HE COULDN’T BE! “He attached an ANCHOR? TO A BOWLING BALL?”
He explained, “You see, he Bondo-ed an anchor into the finger holes of a bowling ball.”
“HE WHAT?”
“It’s simple. He glued an anchor into the bowling ball, and as I drove he’d drop it out the window.”
“Why haven’t I heard about this until now?”
“I don’t know, it’s not that big of a deal.”
“NOT THAT BIG OF A DEAL? He put an anchor into a bowling ball and you both dragged it from a moving car. What if it had caught on something?”
“Then he would have let it go.”
“YOU THINK he would have let it go. But in that moment, say, like those who are water skiing and never let go of the rope, YOU THINK he would have let it go. But the mind doesn’t work that way.”
“But it never caught on anything.”
“THEN THANK GOD YOU NEVER DRAGGED HIM TO HIS DEATH.”
Then he went on to explain that by attaching an anchor to the bowling ball they were able to whittle the ball all the way down to its cork-filled center. The experiment, it had worked.
“What are we going to tell Leta?” I probed.
“LET GO OF THE BOWLING BALL!”