Grand Championship of the World

Several times a week, I compete for the Grand Championship of the World...

My best friend lives across the street... His name is Chuck... Most nights of the week, I head over to Chuck's garage to unwind, shoot the bull, and share crude jokes... He has a little 13-inch TV in his garage, and we usually watch whatever we can pick up on the bunny ears... Sometimes we get lucky, and it's a sporting event... Or re-runs of Everybody Loves Raymond...

We occasionally talk about our jobs, although not all that much... We're in two completely different occupations, so we don't spend a lot of time talking shop...which I think we both appreciate... We'd rather spend our time talking about our families, cracking on each other, and just talking about nothing...

A couple years ago or so, Chuck bought a pool table... Since we spend so much time in his garage, it was the logical place to put the pool table...

We'd play pool for hours... 9-ball, mostly... We played in the dead of winter... We played in the dead of summer... We invented weather-related terminology, like "cold roll"...describing how the ball rolls down the table three times farther than normal when the table felt is 10 degrees or less... We've played dressed in so many layers of winter clothes that we look like the Michelin Man... And we've played dripping in sweat when it's 98 degrees with 94% humidity in the garage...

It helps a lot that we're the same skill level, so most nights are competitive... Occasionally, one of us gets on a roll, but normally, it's about a 50-50 split... We'd stay up ridiculously late at night, though, and then be draggin' ass the next day at work...

So one night, as we were playing through a fog of fatigue, unable to stop ourselves, I finally blurted out that this game would be the final game of the night: the Grand Championship of the World...

The name stuck, and every night, when one of us was getting tired, we'd call the next game to be the Grand Championship of the World... It quickly became the game to win... Chuck could beat me at every game of pool all night, but if I won the Grand Championship of the World, I was elated, and Chuck was left screaming obscenities in frustration in his garage... And vice versa...

Then, a few months ago, Chuck's wife came up with a brilliant idea: a trophy...

Above is a replica of the trophy at stake... It is approximately three inches tall and whoever wins the Grand Championship of the World is to proudly display it on his fireplace mantle... This 89-cent piece of plastic has turned the Grand Championship of the World into a blood sport... It means EVERYTHING to win the trophy... Every shot is filled with tension, each of us carefully analyzing where each ball on the table winds up, even before everything stops moving... If either of us has a cheap shot at the 9-ball, we don't hesitate to try to slit the other's throat... As the winner bellows in triumph, the loser is left in a heap on the garage floor... It's great fun...

Speaking of which...I have to take the trophy down from my mantle now, and go humiliate Chuck again in his own garage...