I got a warning (or a helpful tip, depending on your skankiness) from Jessica that the Sheraton near LAX is loaded with incompetent car parkers. They’re also rife with active prostitutionism in the lobby for your business traveling needs. Did I mention the proliferation of drug use conveniently located near the elevators?
Speaking of nonsequitors, I spent every Friday night of my childhood at the bowling alley. Not bowling. From the age of two until long past the seven year age limit (I want to say at least ten) I was relegated to the nursery. My GOD the boredom. I was surrounding by screaming brats in a small room with old broken toys. Bored, bored, bored. After graduating from the nursery, I had the relentless pleasure of sitting on plastic benches for three hours in a smoke fogged alley that reeked of Lysol-ish shoe spray while my brain atrophied watching my parents bowl.
This was the 70s. This was before there were GameBoys or cell phones, or DVD players or anything that would help kill time. I envied other kids who had the quarters to play the pinball machines or Asteroids or Pac-Man. I had to make up games inside my head or mentally add up people’s scores before they did, just to prevent The Reaper of Boredom from taking me away.
At fourteen I moved up to the scoring desk where I was paid something like $1.25 to keep score for one of the teams. They kept me in Cokes while they got drunk and I manually added strikes and spares and gutters (again, this was the 70s…before that fancy schmancy auto-scoring they have now.)
On the weekends, my mother watched bowling on TV, which is almost as boring as watching people today play poker on ESPN. She must have had a thing for Earl Anthony, because that’s the only guy I remember from the bowling show. Was it called Bowling For Dollars, or was that some game show I’m confusing it with?
I never took to bowling. I guess when you get too much of a good thing – – you know, the kind that scars you for life – – you overcompensate for it later. So now, I’m overwhelmed with activity. I’m involved in too many things. I even live in two cities. I’ll probably die of an ulcer.
And I blame the three-holed balls and their endless rolling down waxed lanes searching for ten pins to smack down.
* * *
* * * WARNING: LONG AWARDS CEREMONY COMING * * *
If you’re a playa, yo, but you have virtually no pimp handle and your pimp cup looks like this:
…you’re not alone. Kirsten from The Soccer Mom Files had the same problem until she got jiggy with it and now you can too, if you check out her post entitled This is off the Chain, Aight!!
Perhaps you’re wondering why I keep relentlessly linking to Soccer Mom’s blog. Well, the reason starts with her adding Nanny Goats In Panties to her blog roll and ends with her presenting NGIP with the Amy Oops Award. See?
And you bloggers know what’s coming next, right? Wrong! You see, the Amy Oops award appears to have hit a saturation point. I feel I can’t pass this award on any further without it repeating on itself like goose liver and onions in a bacony, garlicky sauce. However, if I am wrong and you wish to add this award to your trophy case, well then, knock yourself out. This award is free for the taking! In fact, if you want to say you got it from me, I’ll say I gave it to you by updating this very blog entry. Hear that folks? All you can eat links for free!
And not to be outdone by The Soccer Mom Files is Wit’s Bitch who has also presented me with the Amy Oops award. (See what I mean by saturation? It’s like Amway around here. Oh, excuse me – – Quixtar.) For those of you who were asleep during my last discussion of the Amy Oops award, here it is again:
Now Sandy from Wit’s Bitch is a bowler who sucks less than she did at the beginning of the season, so you might want to pay a visit and congratulate her for that. Because she got an award for it. She must not have been subjected to the lanes the way I was as a child, because she appears to enjoy it.
And while I’m showing off awards, here’s one I got from Scratch Bags: The KickAssBlogger Award which originated on MammaDawg.
And I would also like to brag about my Spread The Love Award that I received from Twenty Four At Heart. Thank you, Suzanne! I’m honored and awarded and bestowed!
So, okay, that’s enough showing off for one blog.
As you were.
Have I ever told you how much that goat at the top of the comments section makes me laugh? I don’t even remember what my comment was going to be! I see that goat and I laugh!
We never went anywhere when I was a kid. Too many kids, not enough time — or money. So at the ripe old age of 12, I jumped on the opportunity to be on a bowling league at the alley near our house. I was one helluva pin smasher, and I got a trophy to prove it (though no one knows where it is now). It was only as a grown up that I realized my age-12 top bowler score of 120 was not going to be hard to beat. That is, until I tried to beat it and couldn’t . . .
KJ
http://nanadiaries.wordpress.com
I recently referred to my experience as a kid at the bowling alley and you described it perfectly.
For me Acorn King said it best–oh, the pain. Congrats.
I used to work with ladies who bowled in a league and they’d come in every week with tales of league intrigue and catfighting. If they ever do a Real Housewives of New Castle County Delaware, they’ll be all set.
i have the same kind of problem with baseball….
uch..
p.s. congrats for being awesomely awesome. maybe ill make an award for you too!
I NEVER thought to be thankful my parents didn’t bowl – but now I am. Thanks! I added you to my blog roll too! Sorry it took so long!
I don’t bowl much, but enjoy it when I do. But now you’ve got me to thinking about why I might not enjoy going to church.
When I was a wee one, my mom would bring my sisters and I to church with her. We didn’t get to sit with her. We had to go to the basement for bible study.
I hated it. It was boring. The basement was always cold, dull and musty smelling.
You live in two cities? Are you me? Don’t you hate it that you think you have something in one place and when it’s too late, you realize it’s at the other place? I have something like 5 containers of mustard at one place and none at the other. I can only remember I’m out someplace….just not which place.
You live in two cities? Are you me? Don’t you hate it that you think you have something in one place and when it’s too late, you realize it’s at the other place? I have something like 5 containers of mustard at one place and none at the other. I can only remember I’m out someplace….just not which place.
I have never understood the fascination with bowling. I tried it once. The music was so loud you couldn’t talk without screaming and I broke a nail (not just a girlie break either…the kind where you think your thumb might get gangrene). That was enough excitement for me!
I have never understood the fascination with bowling. I tried it once. The music was so loud you couldn’t talk without screaming and I broke a nail (not just a girlie break either…the kind where you think your thumb might get gangrene). That was enough excitement for me!
Your bowling story is really quite sad … eww I couldn’t think of anything worse. Terrible what parents put their kids through. Not at all surprised that you hate the bloody sport now…. Watching it on TV … I would rather stick needles in my eyes thank you!
Eww…your bowling alley description was so vivid I think I can smell the dirty shoes from here. You should try bowling on the Nintendo Wii. It might make you actually enjoy the strange sport again!
I had a high school class “fit for life” where we learned how to manually score bowling. This was after the badminton section…good times..thanks for the memories.
I had a high school “fit for life” class that taught us how to score bowling. This was right after the section on badminton. Good times…thanks for the memories.
I grew up in a back room of the local VFW. There it was the sawdusty (from the shuffle board) whiskey-soaked wood oder that permeated your clothing.
Congrats on the awards. I’ve been meaning to redo my blogroll and you are difinitely one I love to stalk.
Yeah, I gotta say, I’m pretty damn glad i wasn’t tortured by bowling until adulthood. At least i could drink to ease the pain. 🙂
Yeah, I gotta say, I’m pretty damn glad i wasn’t tortured by bowling until adulthood. At least i could drink to ease the pain. 🙂
Eight or ten repeat viewings of Kingpin might help alleviate the trauma of your childhood in the bowling alley …
(I was lucky. I whined until they gave me quarters.)
OHhhhh man instead of a bowling ally my parents were part of a very smokey CB club…breaker breaker 19 I am so not kidding…
Congrats on your awards you so dersve them and if you dont mind i would LOVE to add you to my list of “blogs i stalk”
The only good thing I can say about bowling, is that it’s one of the few sports you can play drunk. With that said, watching it on TV is right up there with watching fishing, or golf, or partaking in oral surgery.
I kinda like that lysol-shoey smell.
It reminds me that my job aint so bad.
You mean to tell me that I finally win an award and it’s all worn out?
Oh well, yesterdays’ triumphant jubilee becomes todays ‘flyer on the windshield wiper’, just that quick.
(..enter day 3)
I feel you, except I spent my youth in the nursery at Jazzersize…toys as broken as the dreams of the chubby ladies…
UGH. I HATE BOWLING.
I hate bowling. For some reason, all my friends loved to go bowling, so every single group date was at a bowling alley. My average was a sparkling 107. This is the 3rd bowling entry I’ve read lately. Now I feel obligated to blog about my bowling misadventures.
I’m feelin’ your bowling alley pain. I graduated to actual bowling lessons. Duck Pin. Srsly.
I can’t even imagine the fine upstanding citizens that must have had the job of babysitting at the bowling alley…OMG. You are incredibly well adjusted for living through that.
Yuck!!! I cannot stand kids toys in nursery’s and waiting areas. They are infested with germs and I always feels I need to spray my spawn and myself down with disinfectant after we visit anywhere with these.
Ahhh, the seriousness a bowler takes to their game. The only time I bowl is late night scotch-doubles with plenty of alcohol flowing which makes me worse as the night goes on. One or two drinks 178 – lost count of the drinks 57… hehe
And look at you…WOW!! Congratulations.
You could pay kids to keep score for you? Another memo I never got! All those Tuesday nights spent trying to check the math of a drunken teammate (or cheating *oops* drunken opponent) and I coulda paid a bored teenager to take care of the whole mess for us? Gah!
Damn… this means I’m older than you doesn’t it?
damndamndamn…