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prance_legolas
Chapter 15 If the Shoe Fits
Jeepers. Not again.
Legolas has got the most incredible knack for disappearing, hasn’t he? Sometimes I swear I’m gonna get him a leash.
While Yes Dear clears the old scores and sets up the next game, I start my search. “Did anyone see where Legolas wandered off to?” I ask the neighboring bowlers. Everyone shakes their head no.
“Maybe he went to the bathroom,” pipes in one of the cute little girls, the one with the braided pigtails in her dark brown hair.
“Maybe he’s playing one of those games you have to put money in, “says the one in the pink ‘Hello Kitty’ shirt.
“Maybe he went to the snack bar to get some French fries,” says the tallest one. “I wouldn’t mind having some French fries with ketchup right now.”
“Mommy, I gotta go to the bathroom too,” says the teeny-tiny little one, tugging on her mother’s arm.
I try the snack bar first, since it’s closest. Surely by now he’s gotten hungry and the smell of chilidogs and popcorn are calling his stomach by name. If he’s found out they sell whole dill pickles, there’ll be no leaving until the jar is empty, I’m sure.
There’s no Legolas at the snack bar. I head over to the adjoining pool room, thinking surely the green felt-covered tables with all the multicolored striped and solid balls would hold his attention if he spotted them. I half-expect to find him stretched out across a table, cue stick in hand, trying some impossible trick shot just like the pros, surrounded by half-a-dozen female spectators staring blatantly at the display instead of the demonstration.
Still no Legolas.
I catch up with Yes Dear on his way to the check the men’s restroom and, after a brief conference, I decide to see if the Prance has mistakenly wandered into the ladies room by accident. No luck for either of us.
“You don’t think he went out to the car, do you?” Yes Dear asks.
“Gosh, I hope not,” I answer. “It’s pouring down rain. Plus his Nike Air’s are still sitting underneath his chair. He took so long picking them out, I KNOW he wouldn’t walk off and leave those.”
As we leave the concession area, I happen to glance back to where Lil’ Pip waits for us, sitting there in her chair at Lane #13. There in the seat beside her sits ‘Orcbait’, pulling off his maroon and navy bowling shoes.
Thinking he’s unhappy enough with his performance so far that he’s in a hurry to go home, I trot over to our lane to reassure him that everybody takes a bit of time to get the knack of rolling a ball 60 feet and knocking down a row of pins. Except when I get to the chairs, I realize he’s not given up quite yet. Not in the least.
On the seat beside him sits a pair of the most hideous rental bowling shoes ever created. Not only are they neon green, orange, yellow, and pink, but they’re patterned in HOUNDSTOOTH CHECK.
“Luuk at da shoez da maen at da daesk foewnd jest fur me!” he crows, holding the putrid things aloft. “Noew u bedder wach owt, ‘Arwen’,” he teases. “Wonse my shoez an my baell maech, u ar noet gunna bea aebul tu beet me!”
Gads, he’s positively giddy.
Lil’ Pip rolls first, me second, Yes Dear third, and suddenly it’s fashion conscious ‘Orcbait’s’ turn. Proud as a peacock, he struts to the ball return, making sure to nod and smile at each of the little ladies watching enraptured to his left. He turns to the right and gives a wink to the tourney couple. Picks up the ball. Inserts his fingers. Begins his preparatory stance. Bobs, shuffles, and then adds a move of his own.
He clicks his heels together, three times, just like Dorothy with her ruby red slippers in “The Wizard of Oz”.
The hot pink bowling ball rolls dead center down the aisle, hooking just slightly as it approaches the end, and proceeds to knock down six pins.
“Whoooooe Hoooooe!” shouts the Prance. “Dey deed it! Da shoez wurk!” After a couple of seconds, he amends his previous statement with, “Oeh, coepierite Celeborn!”
Yeah, I think he’d better not forget that, lest the Lord of the Galadhrim finds out he’s guilty of copyright infringement.
He goes on to repeat the intricate dance in the horrible bowling shoes, and this time from my place sitting just to the right and behind him I can actually read his lips as they form the words, “Thur’z noe plaese lik hoem.” He clicks his heels together, one. . . two. . .three, then completes the first frame by taking down three more pins, giving him an opening score of nine.
“Gosh, Legolas,” breathes Lil’ Pip. “That’s more than your whole score last time, considering that last time you used the bumpers.”
“Noe it’z noet!” counters the Prance in typical big brother fashion. “Laest tiem I goet tweentie-foar.”
“Like I said...,” Lil’ Pip mutters under her breath.
His next frame gives him a first roll of four and a second roll of five pins down. He comes hurrying back to stare at the computer monitor overhead, only to be disappointed that it continues showing only the scoreboard.
“What’s the matter, Leggy?” Yes Dear asks.
“Whut haeppind tu da leedle kaertuun peepul dat daense arond whin u nock da peenz doewn?” he asks plaintively.
“You have to knock ALL of them down to get the cartoon guys to come dance for you, man,” Yes Dear answers him, clapping him on the back and smirking.
“Oeh...,” mutters the Prance in his mystical bowling shoes.
Hey, that sounds like the name of a rock group. Prance Legolas and the Magical Mystical Absolutely Disgustingly Horrible Houndstooth Check Bowling Shoes.
Or maybe not.
Anyway, the third frame with the new magical but disgustingly awful bowling shoes is a combination of two pins on the first throw and seven in the second. Not doing too badly this time. Well, not until this point anyway. This point is where I look up to see him sitting in the chair beside me, swallowing hard with tears in his eyes.
“Legolas! For heaven’s sake, what’s the matter?” I exclaim, thinking the miracle of actually scoring is becoming too much for him, or maybe he’s upset because he can’t make that last pin drop so that the cartoon characters will perform their antics when it’s his turn. Maybe he’s afraid that when he returns to Middle-earth there will be a bright green neon-colored tattoo across his forehead that says, ‘I Went to Modern-earth and All I Got Was a Gutterball’.
He swallows again, hard and slow, like he’s all choked up or something. I follow his gaze over to the lane next to us.
“I waent won of doze,” he gulps.
The little girl with the braided brown pigtails in the lane beside us is currently sucking on the biggest dill pickle I think I have ever seen. The juice is running out of the wax paper wrapped around it and trickling down her arm. She’s got her face all screwed up and her eyes are full of tears from the sour taste. My elfboy Legolas is tearing up as well.
“Alright. Take a break and go get one,” I tell him, handing him some money. He’s out of his seat and bolting across the slick floor and onto the carpet and into the snack bar in a heartbeat.
Ten minutes, five napkins, two tissues from my backpack, and a handwashing that includes scrubbing all the way to the elbows brings us to the fourth frame. His first throw leaves him with the dreaded baby split. For those who’ve never had the opportunity to face this, I’ll explain. A single pin stands on the spot closest to the gutter on one side, with a pair of pins all the way across at the edge of the other gutter. It’s next to impossible to knock all three of those remaining pins down in a single throw. Legolas steps aside to consult with the expert.
“You go for the pair over there on the left, hit ‘em real hard, and hope one will bounce over across with the momentum and take out the single #10 pin,” Lil’ Pip whispers into his long pointed ear, shielding her words from everyone else who’s eavesdropping by holding the thumb side of her hand against her cheek and the pinky finger side just behind his tender flesh. He flinches with each puff of air from her words, especially the ones starting with the letter ‘p’. “That’s how all the pros do it, just like it says in the book.”
He takes his best shot, but the god-awful wizardly bowling shoes are good only for the #7/ #4 combo. The #10 still stands, mocking the ability of the shoes.
Legolas mutters what sounds like an elven curse under his breath and returns to his seat.
He bowls a three in the fifth with roll number one and knocks down six on the second roll. For the sixth frame, he knocks down nine pins with a fantastic throw that leaves the #7 pin wobbling in its track. Everyone holds their breath except Lil’ Pip, who runs past him and begins jumping frantically up and down on the pine wood, stomping with both feet in an effort to increase the sway on the still-wriggling pin.
No such luck. The pin setter moves down into place and resets #7, which mocks the bewitched bowling shoes just as its predecessor #10 did three frames ago.
He mutters the elvish curse again.
“What did you say?” I whisper as he comes to sit beside me.
“Vys n’vanima ar’ vys atara lanneina,” he answers.
“And...?” I inquire.
“An whut?” he replies, growling a bit as he avoids eye contact, crossing his arms over his chest with a grunt.
“And what exactly does that mean?” I prod.
“It meanz ‘Ur ueglee an ur muthur draessiz u fuennie’,” he says with a smirk.
I’m beginning to think he’s enjoying himself entirely too much.
The Prance’s seventh frame includes six pins down followed by three more on the second roll, and he’s soon stepping onto the approach for the eighth frame. Suddenly, things go awry. Legolas throws the first gutter ball of the second game.
“Whut wuz DAT??!!” he exclaims to himself. Looking over at him, I realize that he has his head down between his knees and he’s actually talking to the Magical Horrible Bowling Shoes. He sighs dejectedly when they fail to answer him. He manages to pull off nine pins on the next throw, so maybe it was just a fluke.
It isn’t until the ninth frame when the ball rolls down to the very end, hugging the outermost top edge of the gutter to clip the #10 pin by an elf-hairs breadth, that I realize what’s gone wrong. He’s changed his routine. He added a fourth beat to the heel click.
“Daeng,” he mutters as he steps back to pick up his hot pink ball for the ninth frame second roll. “I neuw I shuldn’t haev chaenged dat.”
Following his earlier ritual to exacting specifications, he manages eight pins down on the next roll.
“Dat’z bedder,” he says to the shoes as he steps off the platform. He then turns to Yes Dear and asks, “Ar we dun yaet? I wuld like tu goe sea dat taebul en dere wid all da leedle culurd baellz oen it....”
“You’ve got one more turn to go,” answers Yes Dear.
Remembering my thoughts about demonstrations and displays earlier, I’m quick to interrupt. “I think we should all go to Baskin-Robbins and celebrate Legolas’ first time bowling with an ice cream.”
“Whooooe Hoooooe! Coepierite Celeborn!” shouts the Prance. At the end of the tenth frame, his total score for his second game ever in almost three thousand years is a grand total of ninety. Prance Legolas and the Magical Mystical Absolutely Disgustingly Horrible Houndstooth Check Bowling Shoes have enchanted a nine out of every single frame.
On the way out to the car, I congratulate 'Orcbait' on his victory. "You did a nice job, Prance," I say, giving him a pat on the shoulder just before he stoops over to bend himself into the backseat of the car.
"I noe. Thaenkz, al," he mutters, sighing dejectedly.
"Legolas? What’s the matter?"
He shrugs once and then shakes his blond locks gently. "I dunnoe abot dat boewleeng, al. Luuk at whut haeppind tu my feengurnalez. Dere all toern uep." From the look on his face, you'd think somebody just ate his last Keebler Elf Cookie.
I rummage around in the bottom of my bookbag and hand him a pair of nail clippers. "You and Lil' Pip can paint them when you get home, if you want," I tell him.
"Thaenkz, al!"
He's so easy sometimes....
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: August 4th, 2006 03:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: August 7th, 2006 04:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: August 4th, 2006 05:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: August 7th, 2006 04:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: August 4th, 2006 01:19 pm (UTC)I have an idea.
We have a pool table in our basement. It is covered in old baby clothes and I think the walker is sitting on top of it. I can clear all the junk off and put the pretty different coloured balls on top.
Then, I'll find that shiney, fake, lothlorien eleven brooch thingie and put that there too. Elf cookies, of course, maybe a hairbrush as well, I think they would be attracted to that. I'm setting me an elf trap. I am so gonna get me an elf.
Toss that Aragorn doll up there too, everyone knows about the elvish attraction for aragorn.
The funniest part is I could actually do that, nobody would notice, and if they did, I don't think they would ask me about it.
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Date: August 7th, 2006 04:07 am (UTC)You forgot the mirror. That's the most important thing when setting a trap for an elf. Try some of those Mardi Gras beads too. They love those.
Good luck. I promise I won't tell. :~D
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Date: August 7th, 2006 12:13 am (UTC)"Thaenkz, al!"
He's so easy sometimes...."
awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww *dies from the cute*
i'll definitely have to try the shoe trick! i always knew there was somethng about the ugly suckers that always made me lose...
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Date: August 7th, 2006 04:09 am (UTC)It's hard to imagine, but for as beautiful and deadly as the Prance was, he could also be beyond cute too.
*huggles*
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Date: August 7th, 2006 07:20 am (UTC)The Prance is so lovely, though - his joy and his sorrow so utterly genuine and child-like . . . you're so lucky to have him; I just wish he could be cloned!
And well done in heading him off from the "leedle culurd baellz" - shudder to hink what might have happened there!!
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Date: August 11th, 2006 03:09 am (UTC)I would've liked to be a fly on the wall to hear him describing bowling with shoes that don't match and hitting little colored balls with long sticks the next time he met up with the Twins in Rivendell. *g*
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Date: August 11th, 2006 09:41 am (UTC)Ticked pink!!! (Perhaps you could write that sometime soon . . . maybe a letter home?) *still giggling*
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Date: November 25th, 2006 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: November 30th, 2006 02:02 am (UTC)I guess sometimes you just gotta live a little.
apparently, some people gotta live a LOT.