I carefully placed my foot at the second leftmost dot, my right foot hovering next to it and slightly behind, non-weight bearing, ball up to my nose, and stared down the lane, straight between the one and three pins.
“Go Jessica!” yelled Databaseboy over the blaring bowling alley radio station. I never knew that bowling alleys had their own national radio broadcast. I sort of want this station in my car now.
I leaned forward, pushing the ball out in front of me and letting it drop with my step. I brought it forward and released, sliding on my left foot and letting my right foot swing out behind me, reaching up with my right hand as if I was going to grab the head pin.
I didn’t have a lot of momentum with my twelve pound ball (it’s been a while since I played), but the pins went flying and a big X appeared on the video monitor. You see, I used to play in undergrad for P.E. half units and averaged about 125, with my highest average one quarter being 165. These days, like in the rest of my life, I’m way too inconsistent to even break 100 most of the time. In other silly, little-known facts about me, I did archery as well, for two quarters, and am not too bad with a 30 lb. traditional long bow.
It would appear the only consistent thing about me is my inconsistency. I bowled a 113, 136, and a 95, with our last game finished in twenty minutes since the alley was closing. I guess I don’t do anything well under pressure, including midnight bowling.
Luckily for Bloghatress, they turned off the disco lights half an hour before closing time and she seemed to do a lot better without the blinking and flashing. Of course, I also didn’t drink out of the 20 oz. sports bottle we had snuck into the movie theater an hour or so earlier, and this made the lanes look a little straighter to me.
Before Bloghatress’ latest hot date arrived, she, Databaseboy, and I went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In order to appreciate this movie, you have to 1) be a huge Tim Burton fan, and 2) try to forget everything you remember about the 1971 version with Gene Wilder playing Wonka. I have to say, it was wild, it was weird, and it’s even more absurd when you’ve smuggled a gallon of booze and a pound of candy into the theater with you.
Without giving it all away, let’s just say that Burton took some artistic license (when doesn’t he?) and made the story less about Charlie’s honest nature and more about Wonka’s emotional separation from his family. While I had to agree with Databaseboy that this completely changed the nature of Dahl’s original story, I have to say also that I connected more with a character who was successful but without the support of a family who loved him. He is eventually “adopted” at the end, which touches a sensitive nerve with me, but I don’t want to spoil it. Go see it.
Later in the evening Bloghatress told me that she and I were “in the same boat.” I said hold on a second. Other than the three of us who are bowling right now all being recently broken up, we’re not quite facing the same situation here. You just had your Canadian propose to you, which you shot down, and a few weeks later your overly hot new Indian date shows up at this bowling alley to fondle your candy necklace which you haven’t quite gotten through. As we all know, you shouldn’t eat your own candy — it’s much better when someone else does it for you. Me, I ate a few pieces and threw it away and washed my neck when I got home, for fear of waking up with ants all over me at 3 a.m.
We watched Bloghatress’ hot new date bowl for a while, then I stood up and started dancing in front of the seats. “You’re dancing to bowling alley music,” Databaseboy pointed out. And so I was. With all the dancing I hadn’t been doing the whole year, I guess for once I wished I had someone to dance with me in inappropriate places too.
“Sometimes when grownups say forever, they really mean a very long time.”- Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
