The One About Bowling

I just got home from bowling.  It's been several years since I've gone bowling and several years again since the time before that.  I had a lot of fun and hopefully won't wait another several years before I go again.  Here are a few observations:

1.  I have clearly not seen a single music video in a very, very long time because although I recognized most of the songs that they played the only familiar video was for....wait for it....Born in the USA by The Boss Himself.  Vintage!

2.  This bowling alley color coded the balls by weight so you could see from a distance if another lane had a ball with potential or not.  This is absolute genius and also such a painfully obvious thing to do that I can't believe this is the first place I've seen that does it (I'm looking at you, Plaza Lanes in Washington, IL).  Not having to slink around the drunks in the other lanes furtively spinning around each ball until you could see the weight and stick you fingers into the holes to check the fit was such a boon.

3.  Speaking of hands and fingers....I really do not think I'm a germaphobe.  I know I'm not.  Something is definitely happening to me as I get older, though.  Perhaps it's just an enhanced awareness of my own mortality.  Regardless, about an hour and a half into the three hours of bowling one part of my brain seceded from the union in order to dedicate itself to fixating on the horror show of pestilence that I must have on my hands.

4.  On a related note, on the drive home there was a lull in conversation that I chose to fill with, "So, how bad do you want to touch your face right now?" and got the response "Oh my God, it's killing me."  I know we could have washed our hands before we left but, honestly, hands washed in a public restroom    are only half-washed.  I kept myself distracted with fantasies of owning a home autoclave.

5.  I did better than I expected at bowling and I credit it this to the fact that I wore a bowling shirt.  You gotta dress the part.  Plus, in true Big Lebowski fashion, I consumed White Russians.  Also, I find that the more of an ass I make of myself the better I do.  Most of my strikes came when I ended up in a weird sort of airplane/crane hybrid stance.

6.  I must be so much more out of shape then I think I am because an hour into it I was sweating like it was my job and already starting to feel a blister form on my right big toe.  Pathetic!

7. There was absolutely no security with the bowling shoes.  Granted, they were half neon yellow and half neon orange.  But seriously, in my more morally ambiguous and less germaphobic youth I totally would have ended up with a pair of bowling shoes at the end of the night.  Do people not do that anymore or do they have tracker chips in them?  Can you imagine the embarrassment of being tracked down the my Bowling Shoes Retrieval Task Force?

8.  That rug really tied the room together.