W.O.F. 27

In the rare event where I find myself in an arcade with games, I gravitate to the skee-bowling. You can give me a room full of the latest 3-D video games with surround sounds and awesome graphics, but I'll take the simple pleasure of a bunch of pockmarked, out-of-round wooden balls clunking down in front of you once you feed your token in the slot. And, one-by-one, winging those balls up the alley toward the targets, where you try to score the "50" in that skinny little tube area in the upper middle. Inevitably, most fall down into the "10" range.

A couple weeks ago, at the county fair, I was drawn to the skee bowling attraction and waited while people who were clearly addicted to the pastime would pump quarter after quarter into their alley in pursuit of a personal best score. A 150 gets you a prize; some higher score like a 240 or something gets you one of those supersized stuffed animals probably made for 17 cents in some Asian country you have barely heard of.

Anyhow, as I waited, I noticed the girl in front of me used a technique that was working pretty well for her. She would bank the ball off the side of the lane and it would wind up pretty much in the center.

When my turn came, I tried this technique, calculating angles of attack and of reflection, and lo and behold, I amassed a mighty score of 160. Lights flashed and I felt pretty darn special. The lady gave me a choice of a small stuffed green space alien or a blue lizard-like stuffed animal. I chose the latter - probably made in Sri Lanka for three and a half cents - and it becomes my Weird Object for this week. Here it appears in the habitat of our back yard.

I scored the 160 on my very first game. Having scaled these heights so early, I retired and relinquished the lane to the next skee bowler.

Have a great Labor Day Weekend!