Friday night at the bowl-a-rama

"Extreme bowling" was name given to the event on Friday night... I knew in the back of my mind that it was still just bowling with some "bells and whistles" but I went there with an open mind...and came away with this assessment. It was just bowling with some "bells and whistles"... For those of you who don't know, I was a bowling league participant when I lived in New York... Every Thursday night we would meet and roll our games (I was terrible), but it got me out of the house and hanging with my "buds" during the long cruel winter when there was no golf... I never quite got the appeal of bowling... in golf, when you made the same stroke the resulting shot is the same... in bowling, you hit the pins in the same way and the results are NEVER the same! The frustration factor is way too high for me... When I left New York and moved back to New Jersey, I swore I would never bowl again... And I kept my promise until Friday night...

32 people signed up for the event and we met at the alley and just picked lanes at random (we had 5-10)... I picked an optic orange ball (they also had purple, pink, green and yellow--bell and whistle colors) and dropped in at lane 6... the 5 other players on the lane were all women...(luck of the draw). The lights went down, the laser light show began, the music was cranked up and then we bowled til our arms fell off (unlimited games from 10pm-1am)... The girls on my "team" called themselves "Jim's harem" (believe it or not, I had nothing to do with the name) and we laughed and bowled horribly (nice to see all that crappy bowling I did in NY wasn't a fluke!)... After three games 2 of the girls had enough and took off so I decided to roll two games and Jill rolled 2 games... We rolled one game regular (me-righty, she-lefty) and the other game with our opposite hand. Needless to say, I can now officially bowl badly with EITHER hand!!

At 1 am, the lights were turned up and we were turned out... As I drove off into the night back to Chandler and a tube of Icy-Hot (for my abused shoulder joints), I vividly remembered why I had sworn off bowling in the first place and re-issued my vow not to attend another "Extreme bowling" event ever again... Or any other event having to do with bowling.