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Winning the dunk contest

Mic Smith
The Post and Courier

Bryce spent most of his time underwater while sitting in a dunk booth on Sunday.

Maybe it's "bink" or maybe it's "bonk," but whatever sound that stupid dunking booth makes when one of those annoying little kids hits the target with a baseball from 6 feet away sending me plummeting down into a tank full of stinky pond water, if I never hear it again it will be too soon.

Now don't get me wrong, I had a blast sitting on the platform in the dunking booth at the BBQ and Bluegrass Festival on Sunday. I just hated the part where the platform dropped away, sending me plummeting into 300 gallons of water that smelled like they came straight from a fishery. This happened approximately every 14 seconds.

Sure the kids had fun and native West Virginians finally got to exact a little revenge (all while raising money for charity), but I'm not going to lie, I hate each and every one of them.

I hate the 6-year-old boy with the 2-inch-thick glasses who apparently didn't get the memo that he's supposed to be a scientist and not a major leaguer.

Bink. Splash.

I hate the 65-year-old grandfather of the future little scientist, who followed his grandson's lucky strike with two of his own.

Bink. Splash.

And I hate the group of eight 20-somethings who, even in a drunken stupor, managed to drop me into the tank roughly 15 times in the course of five minutes.

Bink. Splash. Contract e-Coli.

For more than an hour I sat patiently inside the steel cage of the dunking booth smiling politely at complete strangers — who I imagine under different circumstances would actually probably stop to help you change a flat tire if you were stranded on the side of the road — as they tried with all their might to, well, kill me.

It wasn't just that they wanted to send me to a painful splashdown every time, it was that they DID send me to a painful splashdown every time.

Kids, adults, Stevie Wonder, you name it, if they paid their $2 for three balls, they hit the target. It actually got to the point where it was more thrilling for the ever-growing group of spectators when somebody actually missed.

Now I don't have a whole lot of firsthand knowledge what a good throw-to-dunk ratio is, but 1:2 seems a tad ridiculous. (Yes, you read right: The machine was so rickety that many times, after getting sent into the water, I would try to sit back on the platform and it would collapse, sending me back into the deliciousness below.)

One kid, who must have gone through his entire college fund to buy baseballs to throw at the target (and just for the record, I think he would have thrown them at ME if there wasn't a metal cage protecting my face), must have sent me into the water a dozen times alone.

Even the volunteers running the booth seemed to want me to get dunked. In fact, one of them was nice enough to buy the aforementioned little Nolan Ryan three more balls at the end of my time in the booth.

But in the end, the gods let me leave holding my chin up high, as the brat missed with all three. Or so I thought. As it turns out the last one hit my car.

While a bigger man would laugh and say, "That's OK, it's all in the name of charity," I can't help but think: Next time I see that little punk in public, I gonna bink him good.

Bryce Donovan will probably also give him a wedgie. Reach him at 937-5938 or bdonovan@postandcourier.com.