Bowling

Back in the first half of third grade I was involved in an after-school bowling league (this was when I lived in Cleveland, Ohio). Every Friday afternoon a school bus would take us to a local bowling alley and we'd spend a couple of hours bowling for a few games. There'd be no big game-plan for how to get non-stop strikes; I'd basically wing it, just following the list of which group I'd bowl with that particalar day and I'd try to keep the ball from rolling into the gutter. I didn't care about getting a high score. I wanted to have a good time. Still I was confused about where I was, I'd didn't seem to fit in that well. So after several months I'd stop going there. Actually one of my biggest memories from that time was hearing the local 40 radio station playing ABBA's "Honey Honey" as I got on the bus.

Yesterday the Philadelphians MC had their 32nd anniversary celebration held at the Laurel Lanes Bowling Emporium in Maple Shade New Jersey, where about 20 of us did three games of bowling. We were set up in five teams. The last time I bowled was back in college. So needless to say I wasn't that great--I didn't break a hundred for my score, though somehow I did get a strike in the first game and a spare in the second. I was basically winging it--for a moment it was like I was back in first grade. Again there was no real big game plan, just try to roll the bowling ball down the lane without it going into the gutter. Which happened a few times. There was a lot of deep-fried finger food for us--pizza, chicken fingers and wings, mozzarella sticks, etc.--one had to be careful not to get our fingers too greasy so the ball would accidentally slip off our fingers. I think that I ate too much there because my stomach was upset later that evening. But hey I had a great there with my fellow Philadelphians that afternoon. We all did. Though a few of us were kind of hurting since we hadn't bowled in years including myself, where my tailbone was hurting from all that bending over to throw the ball down the lane. (It went away in a few hours after I took some ibuprofen.)