Monday Night Pinball League

At seventy-one, I joined a pinball league. My grandson found it on the internet. It meets every Monday at a little arcade bar downtown that has thirty old machines, some from the 1970s.

When I was a teenager, I spent every quarter I had on pinball at the bowling alley near my house. I was pretty good. Turns out it all comes back. The flippers, the nudge, the way the ball slows at the top of the ramp. My hands remembered.

The league is a mix of people: computer programmers, a nurse, college kids, a retired judge, and me. They call me "The Wizard," which is a reference to a song, I'm told.

In September, I won the monthly tournament on a 1979 machine called Gorgar. The kids screamed. One of them took a picture of me holding up a small trophy shaped like a flipper. My grandson put it on the internet. Apparently I'm "trending" in a pinball group in Belgium.