I was still wiping the crusty sleep boogers from the corners of my eyes when I walked into the AMF bowling center in Mechanicsville for the Junior Achievement charity bowl-a-thon. I wove through the green-clad masses and found Dwayne at Lane 15. He looked up from the moulded plastic chairs as I approached and thrust a pair of bowling shoes into my hands. My fingers fumbled as I put them on. It was too early for tying laces.
Mauricio and Isabel showed up shortly after, put on their shoes and looked equally displeased to be out of bed so early in the morning. “I’m on four hours of sleep,” said Mauricio as he slumped in a chair.
We were just generating enough waking-brain power to figure out the electronic score board, when Leslie, our fifth team member and resident BRICK proofreader, came bounding up, decked to the hilt in St Patrick’s Day flair. “Hello! Hello! Good morning!” She dumped an arm load of green trinkets on the counter. “Last year, they gave out prizes to people who had certain items with them. This year I came prepared!” 
We had just finished entering our nicknames into the computer (DW, T-Cup, Izzy, Mau and Lellie respectively) when the announcer for the event bid everyone a bubbly hello and thanked us all for coming out to support the Junior Achievement fund raiser. There was a round of applause and then the crashing din of falling pins as teams bowled a few warm up frames.
“Heineken or Yuengling?” asked Dwayne as he headed to the snack bar.
“What?” I asked, not yet understanding the question.
“Heineken or Yuengling? I’m getting the first pitcher.”
“Dude, it’s not even 9 o’clock!”
“Yuengling!” Isabel and Mauricio answered simultaneously and off Dwayne went to get us our morning pick-me-up. We passed around the glasses, paused for a toast and then got to the task at hand: bowling!
We were barely through our first round of gutter-balls when the announcer came back on and asked for the first person who could spell leprechaun correctly. Leslie was off in a flash and returned with a free night’s stay at Hampton Inn. “I won! I won!”
“Of course you won!” I said, “You’re a proofreader! I sure as hell don’t know how to spell leprechaun… L-E-P-E-R-K-A-H-N?”
Our first round of bowling was drawing to a close. Mauricio led with a score of 144. The rest of us were trailing behind even with three “freebie” strikes. By frame 9, Dwayne had 95 points. “You have to knock down five more pins or you’ll have to ‘fly the hog!’” I told him as he stepped up for his final frame.
“What’s that?” He asked.
“House rules! If you don’t break 100, you have to bowl the first frame of your next game with your fly unzipped and your… well… your hog flying.” 
Dwayne answered with a spare and a strike and kept his pants firmly zipped.
The announcer called out for the largest set of keys and Isabel, Mauricio and I hurriedly attached our keys together to win the prize. The winner had 29 keys, our keys combined only held 22. “Cheaters never win,” said Leslie, and then proceeded to win a small plastic piggy bank with green “shoe laces” that were actually just pieces of yarn.
Mauricio won a box of golf balls for having a parking ticket on him and Leslie won yet another prize for being the first to show her library card.
We started our second game and our second pitcher and my beer-to-skill ratio reached its peak. Including my three freebies, I only had two open frames for a final score of 196. Dwayne once again narrowly avoided flying the hog with a score of 100.
On our third and final game, there were no freebie strikes. Isabel and I started off neck and neck and she pumped her fists in the air with every good frame. Unfortunately, the early morning and early beer began to catch up with me and my game began to falter. I even threw a gutter ball on my ninth frame. We traded frames but I eventually pulled ahead 157 to 119. Mauricio only scored 81. “Oh snap!” yelled Isabel. “You have to fly the hog!”
“That was the last game! Sorry!” shrugged Mauricio.
“Then you’ll have to fly it on the way to Applebee’s,” I told him as we packed up our stuff and headed for the door.
“Where did Leslie go?” asked Dwayne as he turned in his shoes.
“I don’t know. I guess she left,” I said and we headed out into the blinding noonday sun, happy to have been able to help out and have fun at this charity event.
Leslie caught up to us in the parking lot. “I won again! They picked me as ‘The person wearing the most green!’ I even got a trophy! I love free stuff!”