itâs scary!â
Thatâs exactly what I thought, except when I stood across from my opponent I noticed he was not standing. He was sitting in a wheelchair.
He had long hair, a green T-shirt, and was drinking a Steam Whistle. His name was Russell Kinkelaar, twenty-eight, from Lindsay, Canada. Heâd been in the chair since he was four, when a drunkdriver hit him and his uncle. The uncle and the drunk died and Russell has been paralyzed from the waist down ever since.
Nice. If I lost, I was out. If I won, Iâd have beaten some poor uncle-less guy in a wheelchair.
Now I was perspiring at the hairline. In the distance I could hear people doing cheers at some other table. And instead of concentrating on my first throw, I kept thinking, âWhat in hell does a Rock Paper Scissors cheer sound like?â
Fingers, Knuckles
Cuticle, Nail!
Our Phalanges
Never Fail!
There was a drunk guy standing next to me, part of my pool. âYou nervous?â I asked.
âNah,â he slurred. âI come for the dollar beers. I drove all night, eight hours from New York, just to come to this.â
I stared at him. âUh, the beers are five bucks.â
He looked at me like Iâd told him he was drinking turpentine. Then he looked at his beer. âDick nipples!â he said.
The referee called Russell and me forward. Thirty people gathered around to watch, and exactly one of them was rooting for meâTLC. And she was caving a little. âWell, wouldnât it be
nice
if he won?â she whispered. The ref drew us together. I sort of hunched over to be more down to his level. I heard somebody
tsk-tsk
. I guess this makes me an ass.
Nonetheless, I stuck with my plan, playing the rube. I asked the ref a few dumb questions. One was, âIs it best out of ten?â The other seven looked at me judgmentally. Then I threw Scissors, which cut his Paper nicely. The crowd groaned like Iâd just put a kitty in a blender. I donât remember what the hell I threw after that, but I beat him in the first game, two out of three. Then he beat me two out of three. The crowd roared their approval. All tied. He spun his chair out away from me to steel himself (sorryâfigureof speech) and then back toward me. For the rubber game, I started with Paper, figuring wheelchair or no wheelchair, guys never open with Scissors with so many people watching, and I was right. My Paper clobbered his Rock. Then I threw Rock, for no reason at allâand he threw scissors and I was through Round One-A.
Very, very light applause and a few scattered boos. Russell took it well. âI tried to change it up in the first round,â he admitted, âbut nothing worked. Then you just beat me bad in that last game.â
He looked so sad, I realized even I felt bad about beating him. But not as much as to not remind you that my personal record was now 3â1.
Right after us, the drunk guy from New York lost his first game and got so pissed he ripped off his entire bib. Safety pins went flying, except for one of them, which bent and poked him in the chest. And thatâs when I said, âUh, itâs best two out of three. You havenât lost yet.â
He looked at me and looked at his crumpled bib and said, âDick nipples!â And then he lost the next game, too.
Now there were four of us. I was first up, except my opponentâa tall, dark-haired guy in a button-down shirtâwas on his cell phone. It was me and the ref and the crowd waiting for the guy to finish up. âOK, OK!â the guy was saying into his phone. âOK! Extra large! What? I donât know! Whatever color they have!â
The ref said, âSir, you must hang up now or you
will
forfeit.â
Guy on the phone: âI donât know! A hundred percent cotton! I gotta go!â
The ref started the game instantly and the guy was completely flummoxed and I beat him 2â1 in the first game and 2â0 in the
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