[Shrek] Insanity, Cheating, and Redemption

Fiona and I, along with friends Rich and Josie, bowled in the couple's league this summer at Colonial here in Worcester. For the most part, even though we bowled like crap for most of the season we had a good time.

For the most part.

Unfortunately, the league included an absolutely batshit crazy woman. And when I say "batshit crazy", I mean legitimately "eleven eggs short of a dozen" type of crazy. Add to her insanity the social skills of a seven year old and a more annoying voice than Fran Drescher, and you have all the makings for a huge explosion.

And that explosion came two weeks ago.

Our team--in next to last place and bowling the last place team--was bowling in the lanes right in front of the desk. So when I wasn't bowling I spent most of the night leaning against the desk shooting the shit with Bobby. While I was bowling the first five boxes of the third string something happened at the desk, that had I known about I would not have returned there when I was done.

When your match is over you fill out a yellow score sheet and turn it in at the desk. It seems that the crazy woman made a change to that sheet after it was turned in. Was she cheating as some were saying? Was she fixing an error that she says her daughter made? I don't know, and even to this minute, I don't care. What I do care about is what happened next.

As I came back to the desk from bowling, she accused me of cheating. "You cheat all the time and everyone catches you" were her exact words. My only reply to her was "excuse me?". She repeated her allegation. Twice.

I know exactly what she was doing. Because I have had it out with this crazy woman before she was hoping I would verbally defend myself so she could turn herself into the victim, shining the spotlight on me instead of her. There is no way she expected me to do what I did.

I walked away, laughing.

I went to tell my teammates what was happening so that they would know what was going on. Of course the team we were bowling heard me talking with my team, and they also began laughing. From that point on every single time someone got a good break the other team would laughingly accuse them of cheating. Seeing as gossip travels faster than the speed of light, it took absolutely no time for the whole league to know what she did and what she was saying.

For the record, I never told anyone about her changing the scores, only that she accused me and my team of cheating.

Fast forward to last Tuesday, and she was still making her accusation to anyone that would listen--or maybe more correctly--anyone she could corner and whine to. She was told by several people to keep her mouth shut, but as she has the mental power of a small child she just couldn't keep trying to deflect that spotlight off of her.

The team we bowled that week, who had been bowling next to us the week before, jumped right about the "cheating bandwagon" and began not only to accuse us of cheating when we got a good break, but also accused themselves of it. The two teams to our left were also doing it, so we had a great time that night laughing at each other--which if you think about it is the whole idea of the summer league.

Now the best part--I suspected we were going to bowl her team in the last week of the league (yesterday), so I asked Paul to check the schedule to see if I was right. And I was. So I made sure to let a couple folks know she had to bowl us yesterday.

As you may suspect, she was less than pleased to find out she had to bowl against us.

So after a few e-mails going back and forth between the four of us I decided I was going to take the high road--a path I don't normally take by the way--and just ignore the woman. Rich, on the other hand, decided that he'd had enough of her over the last couple years. He placed a bottle of white out and a couple of erasers on the scoring table.

He was also wearing a t-shirt that he made that had this picture on the front...



...along with the words "Super Cheater". On the back he had "HGH? Steroids? Eraser?"

When she saw it, she went nuts. She threatened to have Rich thrown out--which of course she didn't do because there was no chance of it happening. When Paul came down to ask Rich if there was going to be an issue, he calmly said that as long as she kept her mouth shut there wouldn't be any problems.

But, of course, being batshit crazy she couldn't, and after another outburst stormed off.

Our team went on to pound her team into the ground (they get to take her average at 100%, which is probably better than she would have gotten anyway), with me throwing the high triple of the season and was one bad box away from a 400 series. During the night several people came over and apologized to me because I had to put up with her craziness the last couple of weeks, and hoped it wouldn't keep us away next season. It won't, trust me on that.

What I am most proud of is my team, not for standing up for me, but for not letting the drama destroy what was a pretty fun year. I'm also proud of them because we didn't let it get to us, and over the last three weeks went from fighting to stay out of last place to ending up in fourth place and over .500 on the year after bowling so badly over a third of the season.