Ben Holinger has never been what someone would call an interesting man. He stands at a comfortably average 5’10”. He has brown hair and brown eyes. He makes a comfortable middle class salary, working a comfortable job as a salesman for a children’s toy company in Baltimore, Massachusetts. In high school he didn’t play any sports, wasn’t part of any clubs, and received a GPA of 3.0. His favorite food is pizza. His favorite author is James Patterson. He enjoys watching old Friends shows, and he always laughs at the same jokes. Yes, Ben is the definition of average. He simply cruised through life, thinking everything was fine just the way it was, until that one day, when the planets aligned, pigs flew, and felines and canines alike rained down from the heavens. On that day, Ben got drunk.

Ben had never been drunk before, it was simply not something that he was into. There had been days in his life in which he had drunk alcohol before, but he had always avoided the kind of crowd that would do keg stands in the front lawns of frat houses while juiced up Guido’s cheered them on. This day however, was different. On this day, Ben let his dog out the front door so he could do his business in the lawn. Ben turned away for a second, and the poor mutt took one step too far into the road. I don’t know if dead dogs have any dignity, but I’m sure Ben’s dog would be horrified to know that the vehicle that caused his demise was none other then a Toyota Prius.
Ben is not an emotional guy. He didn’t cry when he broke his arm riding his bike in the 4th grade. He didn’t cry when his parents got divorced when he was 16. He didn’t cry at his sister’s wedding. The heartless bastard didn’t even cry at the end of Toy Story 3. But, when Ben saw his dog’s broken body lying in the road, he cracked. Decades of emotion rose to the surface, and the walls holding them back simply could not hold any longer. He didn’t stop crying for almost an hour. You see, all of Ben’s family lived in California. And while Ben did have friends, he didn’t have anyone that would be considered a best friend. That dog was the closest thing he had to a true companion.
Ben started walking. He had seen enough movies to know what the average people did when they suffered a great loss. They became depressed, and consumed large amounts of some mind numbing substance. Since Ben was the definition of an average person, he did the normal thing and entered the first place where he thought they’d be serving alcohol. The way fate works is truly mysterious, for this was the only bar in Baltimore that had a dirty little bowling lane tucked away into a corner.
Ben’s head rested against the counter. After the first hour, he had stopped counting the drinks. The world spun in a multi colored haze, the bright neon signs like shooting stars against the dark brick walls. Ben didn’t know what he was doing. He didn’t know how he was going to get home. He didn’t even know where he was. All he knew was that his reason for living was gone. He was nothing. He wished that a fire would start in the bar, and that in the rush to get everyone to safety, he would be trampled, or simply forgotten, overlooked. It would be no different, for he was already horribly alone. The anchor that had held his soul to the earth had been torn from the ground, and now he was left, suffering in this sea of depression, wishing that it all would just end and then…
“Hey.”
Ben’s eyes made a valiant effort to focus, but all they managed to see were a pair of dark green eyes, resting on what appeared to be a female face.
She smiled at him and put a hand on his shoulder, “Rough day?”
Ben was beginning to get a full view of her face. He immediately realized he had made a serious mistake. This was not just a female that had come to rescue him, pull him out from his depression. This was an angel.
She waited for a response for a few moments and then continued, “Well, yeah, basically me and my friends wanted to play a game of bowling, but there’s only three of us, and like everyone knows that you can’t play a game of bowling with an odd number of people, and you’re the only other person in this place, and you know, bowling can be fun, so we were wondering if you would maybe want to play?”
Ben rose from his seat. “Sure, I’ll play.” Ben had never bowled in his life. He had no idea how the points worked, or what gutters were. All he knew was that the angel had asked him to play. So he would play.
Ben held the bowling ball up in his right hand. It was a 12, a perfectly average ball for an average sized man. He threw it down the lane, just like the angel had shown him. It struck the center pin, and the rest fell with it. Both the girls in the group high fived him and yelled drunken congratulations while the man they were with scoffed. “Beginner’s luck.”
Ben agreed with him, and waited his turn in silence. When he got up and once again threw the ball, once again all the pins fell. The next time all the pins fell again. On the fourth time, when he once again bowled a strike, all 3 of the other bowlers were in awe. By the 6th strike they were calling their friends and taking a video to upload to youtube. By the eighth, the bartender and bus boys had come to see what all the commotion was about, and were cheering with the other three bowlers. On the 9th strike the last pin wobbled for about three seconds, but took a lifetime to fall over. After the 10th, everyone in the bar was overjoyed. They held Ben up in the air, not an easy feat for a few drunk kids to do, and chanted his name. Or rather, they chanted “ASU! ASU!” because he happened to be wearing an Arizona State football shirt at the time. Ben smiled as they held him up in the air. He continued to smile as they dropped him and ran out of the cramped bar. One of the bus boys had left the stove unattended, and the bar was now on fire. By the time they realized that Ben was still sitting on the ground, the flames had spread to the door. Ben Holinger had just bowled a perfect game with a score of 300. The average is 173.