The Secret Lives of Bowling Shoes

"I can't go out feeling like this, Finkie. I gotta go home, gotta..." Harry broke out into song.

"Shit, shower, shave and shampoo..."

"No...Stop it, Harry."

"I'm gonna shit, shower, shave and shampoo..."


"Stop it..."


"I'm gonna shit, shower, shave and shampoo."


"Stop it now or I'll--"


Sing. Finkie couldn't hold out any longer; the inane ditty went duet.

I'm gonna shit, shower, shave and shampoo
And when I'm through,
I'll shoot some goo
Gonna shit, shower, shaaave aaand shampooooo...

"I hate myself for doing that," Finkie said.

"Don't, it's a classic."

"Enough classic. Let's just go already."

Harry untied his bowling-shoes and winced. "Nasty...Not with my feet drenched in this rancid, rented bowling-shoes sweat. I feel like I'm being smothered in a communal pair of used underwear," he gagged. Spontaneously.

Finkie slipped off his bowling-shoes without untying them and took a quick sniff of the insides. "Nothing wrong." He faked gagging before giving his shoes to Gord at the bowling-shoes-rental counter.

"We disinfect the shoes after they're worn," a proud Gord said. And it was true...at least most of the time.

Harry rubbed his feet in disgust. "Then why can I feel the germs building colonies in my toe-jam as we speak?"

Snotty young folk, Gord thought. If the retired size-niners were good enough for him to wear as regular shoes, then occasional bowlers like Harry had no right to complain. All feet are equal in the eyes of the Lord, although some smell worse than others. At the end of the day it was all about the socks. If you wore thick ones, you could walk the world over.

Gord  pointed to Harry's thread-bare socks. "Y'need new socks, that's why. There's a lady down the street who mends socks for thirty-nine cents a pair, doesn't charge tax. I think I still have her business card."  He pulled out a cigar box  from the Size-12 shelf and searched among the pile of curios.

"Hold on, I think I know who you're talking about! Myrna! She used to have a counter inside my cousin Ira's handbag repair shop! Yeah, Myrna...big...big...Myrna. She must've weighed five, six hundred pounds..."

"More like a solid two-forty...in her prime.  I know that for a fact, we used to be...friendly...real friendly." Gord sighed. "And those gorgeous feet, toes like little wienies...And just as tasty! O Lord, sweet Myrna," Gord growled with a mischievous grin. O, how her eyes lit up when he'd bring her home a size-twelve he reconditioned with tender loving care!

He grabbed for the Aqua Velva from the Size 8 shelf and went through the motions of slapping on some cologne. Only thing; it was empty.

"But that's her alrighty. Myrna ran a nice cash business at your cousin's store. Has a heart of gold. If a regular was a little low on cash, she'd give them credit, no matter how big their sock-holes were." Gord sighed. "I know, that's how we first met."

"It's okay, Gord. I'm due for new socks," Harry said.

Finkie laced up his construction boots and said, "It's toe-jam or home jam, Harry. If you go home, you'll get cornered by your mother and the mahjong yentahs."

"Shit, I forgot about that. And your mother will be there too."

...Which peaked Gord's interest. Anything peaked Gord's interest. He pretended that he was busy as he arranged and rearranged the bowling-shoes homed in his real estate of humid shelves, while eavesdropping on the conversation. Business as usual.

Yes, some day Gord Smithy would write the great Canadian novel about the racy lives of these bowlers, at least that's what he promised Ian, his plump and ponderous Persian kitty. Over the years Gord had strung together close to a thousand words of his novel and even had a title, The Secret Lives of Bowling Shoes."Oh Lord," he'd confide to Ian, "if them shoes could talk. If them shoes could talk..."

"Last week they kicked out mom for cheating," Finkie said. "Apparently she's been raking it in for years."

Gord pricked up his ears. Yum, yum, yum, another juicy tale.

"What could she be raking in?" Harry asked. "They play for plastic chips."

"And mom's got drawers full of them. Ever since they locked up dad, she's gone klepto. She'll swipe anything, even plastic betting chips!"

"Aha," Gord blurted.

Finkie shot him a stern look. Gord yanked a pair of bowling-shoes from the Size 12 shelf  and exclaimed,"Look what we have here - a size-eleven!" He deftly placed the size twelve he was holding, back on the Size 11 shelf.

"...Come to think of it, I thought I lost a pair of hockey tickets at your house last year," Harry told Finkie . "I was sure that I left them in the breast pocket of my leather jacket."

"A pair of reds in section 212?"

"Yeah!"

"Okay...My mother gave them as a gift to my epileptic cousin, Arnold for his bar mitzvah. Huge hockey fan that kid, but he'd never been to a Canadiens game in his life."

"Arnold? You mean "Ziffel," the red-headed kid in the Guy Lafleur hockey sweater? In fact, I remember him having a seizure at your house two years ago, the night that the Canadiens were eliminated from the playoffs...I hope that at least the poor kid enjoyed the game."

"Not really. My mother re-stole the tickets during our Passover seder when they hid the afikoman...I later overheard her telling my father when she visited him in jail, that she scalped the tickets for two hundred bucks."

"Two hundred bucks?!"

"Yeah, he was totally pissed! He thought that for a playoff game, she could've gotten double that."

"Forgive me for saying this, Finkie. But right now I hate your mother."

"You asshole! She loves you, Harry. She's always saying how cute you are."

"Really?"

"She says it all the time."

"Well, she is a fine looking woman, with a nice rack, I must say."

"Fucking cool it, you perv! This is my mother we're talking about. A little respect, please."

"Sorry, forget it, Finkie. Let's just go straight to the club, okay?"

"Okay, okay. But I'm keeping out an eye on you next time you come over."

Harry patted on the interior breast pocket of his jacket just to make sure that his wallet was still there.