11:01 a.m. - 2005-02-05
keep on rockin in the free world
Well, last night involved a delicious calzone, cans of Coors Light (ah, high school memories) because you can't take bottles to a bowling alley apparently, a bowling score of 106, and the information that our new friend Marc owns his own bowling ball and consistently breaks 200 at "the alley."
The evening started out nicely enough at a local Italian restaurant. Then we proceeded over to the next door bowling alley. We walk up to the counter (Kelly had made reservations for a lane and we were a little early) and asked if we could just start then. The lady working there was about 45, had LONG pink fake nails, a strange reddish spiky mullet and a big sweatshirt that said "I'm on the Telephone and I can't get off!" Mind you, she was not on the telephone. She looked at us for a minute, looked at the clock, sighed and said "Come back up to the desk in ten minutes." I looked at Kelly. She shrugged. I leaned in to inquire about why we had to wait and she said to me, sternly, "Ten. Minutes."
OK.
There were about thirteen people in the entire building, about three of which worked there. There were about 16 lanes open. And she was sitting there on her stool, doing nothing. But we had to wait ten minutes.
When we went back up ten minutes later, we started to ask if we could have our lane then...
"Shoes sizes!" she barked at us.
"Umm, umm...12, 9 and 5." I said.
"First names!" she said.
Oh great, we had our bowling names all picked out and now she was going ot put them in the computer behind her little counter. Something told me if I said "StrykerJem" which of course is my bowling name, to her,she would have slapped me. So I just mumbled "Jessi" dejectedly.
After she entered our names in, she leaned over and scowled at us and said "Alright, I'm gonna let you guys start early, but don't even think about playing for longer than two and a half hours. Got it?"
Got it.
About fifteen minutes into our game, we noticed some smoke coming from the ceiling above our lane. For a few moments, I thought perhaps God had struck the building with lightening because that lady was so mean to everybody but we soon figured out that it was a smoke machine, and somehow we had managed to happen upon COSMIC BOWLING. This involves smoke machines, flashing lights, disco balls and a lot of music by Beyonce and 50 Cent. Next to us was a dad and his three elementary school aged children. I was a little uncomfortable when the lyrics "Ooh, I like i like that, she's workn' that ass" came on. And I was extremely uncomfortable when the dad who was probably about 45 leaned over a while later during a different song and said "Oh, I really like this song. Have you seen the video?" "No I haven't." I said "Oh, you should...it's really good." he said. "Oh really? Who sings it?" I asked. "Gwen Stefani and Lil' Kim."
"Cool." I said.
I'm like, dude, you're wearing dockers and a looney tunes shirt. And you have children in 4th grade. It's time for me to introduce you to a little friend I call classic rock.
