Posted 6:17 PM by John A. Seafisk

Bowled Over

I went bowling last night. Not just out of the blue - I was invited for a friend's impromptu birthday celebration. We went to a bowling alley connected with an ice rink I occasionally visit to play broomball.

My scores for the 3 games were 93, 139, 124. A few strikes here, a few gutter balls there, I was overall pleased with my perfomance. PBA Tour, here I come!

The only thing that irked me...well, not irked, but half-annoyed, was the alley's policy of not bringing in outside food or drink. I can understand if we were going to a Dodgers game, because of their dependancy on concession sales of $7 beers, but this wasn't a Dodgers game. (There was more scoring.) Our friend brought cupcakes to share in celebration of his birth. However, he could only bring them in on the stipulation that we don't eat them.

What? Were they afraid our consumption of frosted treats would be an economic dagger into the back of their snack bar? (The snack bar was closed, by the way.) Were they afraid of getting chocolate on their balls? They were mostly black, anyway, so it wouldn't have shown. (Insert your own black chocolate balls joke here.)

So, after 20 rousing frames, we stepped outside. Most people would be stepping outside to smoke; we were stepping outside to eat cupcakes. Like cigarette smoke, I guess the aroma of Duncan Hines treat would be distracting to the bowling alley staff.

And since we wanted to continue bowling after eating, there was the dilemma about our bowling shoes. Do we take them off & turn them in, only to re-retrieve them afterwards? Do we leave them on, having the bowling alley staff thinking we wanted to steal them? Because, as you know, nothing sets the style like walking down Sunset Strip in big bowling shoes with the words 'Pickwick Alley' emblazoned across the toes.

We were told we could walk outside with the shoes on.....AS LONG AS WE DON"T WALK ON THE ASPHALT. I'm guessing the shoes might melt if they touched the parking lot. Just to be coy, I hovered my foot just off the sidewalk...but no one was watching, so I stopped.

All in all, it was a good evening. My arm wasn't too sore, the cupcakes were good, and my post-throw body-english had a few snazzy moves.