Picking Up a Spare

I went bowling last night with Chris, the guy who helped me with my spark plugs a few months ago, and two of his friends. I hadn't been bowling since Ex and I were still dating. In fact, the one time we went bowling was actually the last date we went on before breaking up a week later. I'm not an especially great bowler (I can bowl around 100 on a good day), although I do have my own ball from when I took a bowling class in college back in 1993. I have a thing about touching other people's sporting equipment, so any sport I plan on playing more than a few times is one in which I own my own equipment. I have my own pool cue, by the way.

I had a really good time bowling with Chris and his friends, a heavy set guy with a peach-fuzz moustache named Joe, and a tall average sized guy with a shaggy haircut named Beckett. All three of the guys are under twenty years old. None of them were particularly good at bowling, either, although they kept playing as though they knew what they were doing. All were fond of throwing heavy balls and curving them as hard as humanly possible. Consequently, alot of their hooks ended up in the gutter! For my part, I like a lighter ball (mine is only 12 pounds) that I can bowl straight as a laser and better focus on my accuracy. My biggest problem with bowling is that I can never seem to capitalize on a strike or a spare. My next balls after each always seem to gutter or only hit one or two pins. It would be nice to pick up a spare every now and then.

We bowled for over three hours, and during that time Chris and Joe got into an argument about god-only-knows-what that really brought the mood of the evening down. The argument lasted for at least 20 minutes, perhaps as much as 45 minutes before subsiding. We all continued to bowl, regardless, and my score actually improved with me ending the night with a 127 (I beat all the other guys with that). Of course, during the argument, I made attempts at trying to calm the situation down. Trying to pull as much as I could from my psychological studies, and personal experiences in therapy, I attempted to get Chris and Joe to see things from each other's perspectives and try to understand what was motivating the other's behavior. I encouraged each of them to rise above their pettiness and put the argument behind them so that they could enjoy what was left of the evening. Nothing seemed to help, as these two just wanted to keep digging into each other's skin, figuratively speaking. Even though Chris and Joe eventually ended their outward shows of hostility it was clear that, by the end of the night, they were still holding grudges.

This is where it gets interesting, at least to me. As a final bow to the evening, Joe left before the rest of us were ready to go. While doing so, he picked up the bowling tab for ALL OF US. Joe had already sprung $20 for pizza, which mostly he and I ate, and THEN picked up the $30 tab for all of our bowling. Even Chris was flabbergasted by that move. I'm not sure if Joe was trying to show that he was better than Chris by having done that, or if it was one of those angry, spiteful tab pickups that I've been known to do in the distant past. Perhaps you've done something similar. You know those nights where nothing is really going your way, and you just want to get it over with as fast as possible. So, rather than taking the time to behave rationally you just fork over all the cash in your wallet to the service person and leave without even stopping for your change. It's the sort of rash thing that young men are somewhat typical of doing.

At any rate, it was nice to get out of the house and spend time with other people for a change. I'm fairly certain that Joe and Chris will smooth things over in a day or two, since they've known each other for several years. And, even though the guys are all young enough to technically be my sons, I had a good time feeling as though I was, after a long time without this feeling, surrounded by friends. And it's always good to have spare friends around.

Have fun, and keep living life... or some approximation thereof.