I should have never saved that bowling ball.
Spring had returned. The earth, which incidentally is shaped like a bowling ball, had traveled all the way round the sun again. And there I was engage in my annual spring-garage-cleaning ritual. I had forgotton about that 16-pounder surfaced in all the other junk.
I rescued the ball last year from a neighbor’s curb side trash pile. My wife protested at the time, insisting we didn’t need more junk. I didn’t rejoin with the old line about one man’s trash etc. Instead:
“You never know when you might have to pick up the seven-ten split.”
But life is not without regrets. I wish I never saved it in the first place but how could I throw out a perfectly good bowling ball now? After hemming and hawing, I postponed the decision another year by moving the ball to a different part of the garage. And then I it out of mind.
Until the earth goes round and round again and it’s next spring.
copyright 2018 Christopher Donahue