Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Why I hate bowling

Someday you'll look back on all this and laugh. I don't know how you feel when someone says that to you, but I just roll my eyes. I can't remember one single time when I looked back on something and found it funny when I didn't find it funny the first time. I don't remember anyone ever telling me that I would laugh about bowling, but that is just the kind of thing that the grown-ups I knew would have said if they had known what was going on.

I have probably only bowled about half a dozen times in my entire life so hate is probably too strong a word. Disdain, horror, I don't know; but it's certainly not amusement.

When I was in junior high school, some girls whose clique I wanted to belong to went bowling on Saturday afternoons. These were the same girls who, a few years later, would vote to have "Color My World" as the theme song to the prom instead of "Stairway to Heaven." I was not as discriminating in those days as I am now, so I started to go bowling.

The first week I was invited was a disaster and I never even made it to the bowling alley. I went to the girl's house who had invited me and she had already left. Her mother made her call me when she got home and apologize. The next week the girl and her mother picked me up and drove us to the bowling alley. With a beginning like that, was it any wonder that I didn't enjoy it.

What I did enjoy was making a pest of myself to my older sister. She was in high school and used to go out and do things. I wasn't sure just what it was she was doing; but I knew that whatever it was, was being done behind my parents' backs. This knowledge enabled me to blackmail her into agreeing to take me with her. "I'm going to tell Mom and Dad" had considerable weight in those days.

What a rush. Whatever she was doing must have been pretty good if she would rather take me along than to give it up. I was convinced I had made the leap into adulthood and lost all interest in bowling.

I was incensed to learn, after harassing my sister for two or three weeks, that agreeing to do something and actually doing it were not the same thing. Some of her excuses were more plausible than others. It seemed reasonable that our parents would be suspicious if there was any unnatural show of affection on either of our parts. But I grew more impatient as the days and weeks passed.

During lunch one Saturday afternoon, my mom asked, "Are you going skating with your sister this afternoon?"

This was it. I didn't think she was going ice-skating.

"Yeah, I'm going."

One look at my sister told me I was right.

When we got outside, we started walking towards the skating rink with our skates slung over our shoulders, one skate in front, the other in back. She told me that I had better just do what she did and not say anything to anybody when we got where we were going.

By the time we approached and then passed the skating rink, I was uncontrollable. I wanted to know everything. Of course, all I got was icy silence.

"Look, I told you, I didn't want to take you, so you better just shut up."

We were past my junior high school and on the way up the hill to the high school. I had never been this far on my own without my parents. We arrived at an older three-story house surrounded by a chain link fence and a big yard. The house was kind of run down and the light brown paint was peeling. We walked up the three steps to the porch and my sister rang the bell.

A woman's voice called out, "Come in."

My sister opened the door. I saw a stairway immediately in front of us. The kitchen was on the left. I caught a glimpse of a woman sitting at the table. My sister stepped to the right towards the parlor. Coat, hat and clanking skates were one unit as they were dropped in the corner by the door. Then she headed back towards the kitchen. I could have been her shadow.

The woman sitting at the table had long, wavy blonde hair held in a loose bun with a barrette. She had on a man's T-shirt and a faded pair of jeans. No bra, that was obvious. I had never seen anyone without a bra. I had never seen anyone like her at all.

"This is my sister. I had to take her."

So much for my leap into adulthood. I had been reduced to a babysitter's charge in a matter of seconds. My eyes hit the floor.

"Why don't you both sit down and I'll make some tea."

She got up and moved some papers that she had been working on to one side of the table and cleared places for us. She went to the sink, filled a kettle with water and put it on the stove.

I could only muster up enough courage to look around after she went into the pantry. There weren't just papers on the table. There were newspapers stacked against one wall, books against another. Posters were tacked up everywhere, most contained announcements for meetings or rallies. I picked up a bright blue pamphlet with black ink drawings and I recognized my sister's artwork. I looked at it, then at her.

"Well," she said, still with those hard eyes.

"Nothing. I'm just looking."

The woman came back with the tea. The cups were old, but she had given us saucers; something my mother never did.

This was the first of many visits to this house. We would usually tell our parents that we were going ice skating or to play tennis. But those excuses had a drawback. Just how grown-up do you think you can be when you are lugging ice skates around. Bowling was the answer to all our problems, nothing to carry. Why we never said we were going to the library is beyond me. If there were ever two more unathletic girls than my sister and me, I have yet to discover them. We were intellectual types. Of course, we didn't know that then, we were just two girls who wore glasses.