Peace Train and Gutter Balls

We have changed our hours of operation.

My admirer is no longer here - his last encounter with me was the first encounter.  "I'm Bill".  Wide smile splashes towards me, as he nervously points his full arm towards Edward, his confidant, I suspect.  Edward giggles under his Toronto Blue Jays cap.  They have both suffered head injuries, somehow, somewhere, sometime.   *between you and me, Toronto - what the fuck was he thinking*

In the weeks that follow and the emptiness of the lanes reminds me of Bill.  Safe.  When I arrive I am the only one here in the dark.  In the quiet.  I turn the disco lights on and race upstairs to locked doors and security codes, and more locked doors.  Before, Bill was there downstairs with people, and staff and activity and chocolate bar machines and "the claw is my master" and "hurricane experience" and strikes.

They made a movie here once, unsuccessful in the box office - which doesn't surprise me because if I haven't heard of it, no one has!  The premise, killer kills a bunch of big boobed teens stranded in a "bowling alley" and with each kill, a RED X appeared aka -strike- in the overhang scoreboards.

Lots of people still don't know that scores are now computerized and automatically tallied.  No more pads of paper with rows of 10 frames, and broken pencils, and erasing and scratch out and scratch in.  Done and done. Relax and just play and let us keep track of your gutter balls.

There's suppose to be two ghosts here.  One is a little girl who wants to play ball, and the other is a teen-aged boy who drops dimes everywhere, because his mom use to work here when he died tragically.   Hence, at cash out time, the front desk & servers always find dimes on the floors and stairs.

So far I have found nothing, except the realization of silence and how the future looks bleak without Bill or Edward at the lanes, because without them there are no dimes.  We need to change our hours of operation.

Sometimes I wonder how my mind thinks and scrambles such a load - it gets tangled in thought, the moneymaker and paranormal and triangular space ships and Hummers and bounced cheques, the blind (the possibility of) dead drunk daughter, camp, family, teenager son and his "L", dead cats (here and then), ten pin alleys, laundry, frozen fries, fresh breasts, instant rice, Sriracha hot chili sauce and now Bill.  My mind is a Rubick's cube - an absolute wreck.

Until I finally chose the train I want to be on.