Bowling

Greetings from lane 3,

I am not a bowler, in the literal sense, although I have bowln, or bowled. Whichever.   However in this circumstance I determined that it was better to have bowled than to be bowling.  I was in a fog brought about by antihistamines, which according to the package suggests I do not operate heavy machinery.  A bowling ball doesn’t qualify as machinery but it is heavy so I didn’t want to take chances.

We were in a bowling alley, and upon entering I knew I was in a foreign environment.  I lacked the ability to smell, thanks to my cold, but I could tell there was something in the air attempting to penetrate my senses.  One of my progeny said it smelled like someone’s attic.  Perhaps an attic where old bowling shoes had been stored for several decades.

We had been gathered with a few dozen other souls to salute the passing of my father in law.  It was not a solemn occasion; I did say it was in a bowling alley.  We had taken time in the afternoon to properly acknowledge his life and his passing.  There had been a time of mourning, and now there was a time of celebration.  In fact the day had progressed in a beautiful arc, and now surrounded by the sound of recalled memories and laughter, it seemed Don was honored in a fitting manner.

I’m not certain what the momentum of the evening might have produced but before it could fully manifest itself someone (one of my progeny) pointed out that the potential of several bowling lanes were being squandered.  Not certain of the propriety of bowling at a wake, I encouraged in others the needed curiosity to propel action so that I might avoid blame later.

We addressed the question to the woman who more or less was overseeing the evening’s event, whose name, ironically, was not Marge or Madge.  If I were writing a story about this situation it would have been, however this was real life and so her name was Judy.   She immediately supplied us with shoes and the requisite bowling instructions which was mainly: “Do not take food and drink into the settee area.”

It was interesting to see the unlikely stances each bowler performed in the attempt to propel the ball toward the pins.  Some of the players took on the shapes of various capital letters.  Others collapsed onto the wood floor, apparently having expended their last bit of physical energy in the delivery effort.

 I watched as others hurled the ball in various degrees of contortion, some ultimately scattering pins, other times merely winging one of their numbers, and vaguely irritating the rest.  It seemed that form, power, spin, or loft had little to no effect on the outcome.  I daresay antihistamines would have had little effect either, but I resisted the temptation to humiliate myself further than what is normal.

And so I encouraged success from the sidelines, just behind the sign that said ‘No food or drinks in the settee area’ and thought about the last time I used the word ‘settee’.  Occasionally Judy, who I was told may have been a former Cirque de Soleil artist, would pass through to pound on the side of the Brunswick 2000, which somehow kept score of the proceedings.

It was in this circumstance I found myself watching my children, who are all adults so in the literal sense are not children, but perhaps better referred to as progeny, which has ever so much more of a regal sound.  Just for reference, the thought of regal progeny, much less the use of those two distinct words, I am 100% certain has never occurred in this bowling alley.

What caught my attention was the shoes my daughter was wearing.  If you have bowln, (or bowled) than you know you are required to wear a certain type of shoe, and lacking ownership of such, you must rent a pair.  These shoes, assiduously lacquered with anti-fungal spray, were used by strangers generation after generation until handed over finally to my progeny.  For the uninitiated, in order assure that the tenants of the rental shoes don’t abscond with them, they each have giant numbers on the heel, like prisoner’s uniforms.  That’s in case the idea of taking home someone else’s athlete’s foot was not enough of a deterrent to prevent you from stealing an uncomfortable fashion mistake.

I was looking at my daughter’s rental shoes and remembering something a few hours earlier.

My daughter was about to go for a run between activities, and discovered she was missing one shoe.  It seemed the only way she was going to go was to borrow a shoe from her brother, which for a runner is not unlike asking to borrow your sibling’s retainer. 

It was during this musing that it occurred to me that I might know where the other running shoe was.

Maybe it is not statistically likely to lodge a bowling ball in the gutter of a lane, but those odds did not prevent it from happening.  The response of the players was to launch another ball down into the gutter to free the first.  Ironically this was one of the few times when a player actually failed to get the ball to go into the trough.

This is when Judy sprang into action.  That could be a little misleading.  Judy’s springing days might have last occurred during the Eisenhower administration.  Judy would tightrope down the gutter, free the ball, and return to applause. To her credit, Judy was unflappable.  If anything happened in the chaos that was exploding in the alleys we opened that she had not seen before, she gave no sign of it. 

What had occurred to me as we waited for Judy was that on the four hour drive north we stopped to use the bathroom at McDonald’s.  I’ll digress here to say that while none of us would actually EAT at McDonald’s, for gastronomic, political, ethical, or philosophic reasons, none of us actually object to using their toilets, which for the most part are cleaner than other fast food chains that we won’t eat in.

I had opened the back of the van to dig out the package of antihistamines to deal with my cold symptoms and several other pieces of luggage fell from the van.  Including the vegan-approved  recyclable non-GMO fiber cloth bag that my daughter carried her running shoes in. 

I remembered putting the bag back into the pile of luggage and closing the van, but I really didn’t look close where it had fallen.  Was it possible that one of her shoes had fallen out?

I felt like I should mention this to my daughter.  The longer I thought about it the more awkward it would be to finally mention it.  I finally decided to say nothing and wait to see if the shoe turned up on its own.  Or didn’t.  At which time I would either be relieved or I wouldn’t.

The bowling games went on for hours.  No one had told us when to know when it was over, and unless Judy had intervened we might still be there trying to figure out who was the victor.  The evening unfolded further and there were my brothers in law and a nephew performing live music in the bar next door, which was another turn of events that I would not have predicted.

Earlier in the afternoon we wandered across a golf course Don spent many hours enjoying.  We stood in the soggy grass and spread my father in law’s ashes where we think he would have chosen: in the sand trap.  There at the edge of a beautiful lake that begged for us to stay longer, we said our goodbyes to him and wished him well on whatever journey he took until we meet again.

The next morning I was smiling as I sipped my coffee, still fuzzed by antihistamines.  I don’t know what my father in law Don would have planned for the day if he had been given the chance.  But what took place was what his progeny does well; they celebrated.  There was food and drink and prayer and singing. There was a lot of laughter, and the exchange of memories and the presence of friends.  There was bowling. 

We said our goodbyes and started on our separate ways, all feeling just a little closer even in our distant locations.  Later in the day my daughter reported she had found her missing shoe, so I was spared the decision whether to confess.  And you were spared my use of the phrase ‘waiting for the other shoe to drop’. 

Hope this finds you rolling a strike,

David

Copyright © 2016 David Smith