Tom's Ball Smells Like Apple Pie
by Scott Hardie on August 23, 2014
For the last four months, I've spent Tuesdays at a bowling alley playing in a just-for-fun league. Score was kept, but the mood was friendly and non-competitive, except for one of my teammates who kept competing with us instead of the other teams. :-)
I struggled with it at first, partly because I thought I was signing up for a six-week league and it turned out to be a sixTEEN-week league, and partly because my skills had somehow diminished even though I'm in better shape now. I used to be a halfway decent bowler, earning 120-150 points per game, but in this league I was averaging 70-90 points per game and throwing a lot of gutterballs. It took me a month to make peace with the fact that I was just a worse bowler now, at which point I relaxed and started having more fun with it, although I did eventually get back up to my usual scores in the last few games. Instead of focusing on the points, I set a more modest goal of throwing at least one strike per night, which I managed to pull off every time. My best night saw maybe six strikes. At no point did anyone else in the league approach Chris's level; I think the highest score that I saw was around 245.
It was good to spend time with these guys. It started as a "work league" with two friends from my company, Joandy and Tom, plus Tom's partner Mark as our fourth player. Tom is a more serious bowler who I can tell has played for many years (he's the one who earned that 245 score), while Joandy is a competitive joker who can't help but kid everyone about their scores (and himself on the rare nights when he bowls badly), and Mark is a relaxed and friendly presence. Injuries and a pre-existing condition took a toll on Mark over the season, so Kelly took Mark's place on the team for the final month and was thrilled to get out and get exercise. She would have kept playing with Joandy and Tom in the fall league, but she's going to be busy working overtime. As for me, I'm opting out of future seasons to spend my Tuesdays on long-ignored projects, including a board-game meetup group that I really miss, since I haven't seen them since before the wedding. I had a good time bowling, though, and I'm glad that I did this.
The title of this blog post was my proposed (and rightly rejected) name for the team, which was said aloud on the first night. When Tom originally bought a bowling ball at the pro shop, they offered to make it a scented ball, and for whatever reason, he chose apple pie over other scents. We had fun trying to get Kelly to sniff his ball the first time she played: "No way! I know how guys do that! His ball stinks like sweat or something, and you're telling me that it smells like apple pie so that I'll put my face up to it and sniff, and then you'll laugh at me!" No, really: As creepy as it sounds, Tom's ball really does smell like apple pie.
Logical Operator
The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »
Gingerbread Office
I don't often join in Kelly's craft projects, and it's even rarer for her to join in one of mine. But that's what happened last week when my company held a gingerbread house contest, and Kelly pitched in to help the team that I signed up for. We decided to make a "north pole branch" of our Sarasota office. Go »The Aggravation of Blog Readers by the Movie-Spoiler Scott Hardie
The upcoming Western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford has looked appealing to me for a while now. (I originally used a pic of Brad Pitt in character for the Jesse James goo.) Great cast, great photography, great old-fashioned title. Go »Retrospection
If I recall the dates correctly, yesterday would have been my grandmother's 100th birthday. She lived to just shy of her 89th, despite a lifetime of chain smoking. I remember her as a sweet, generous woman who liked to laugh and teach me life's simple pleasures; a typical afternoon for us was playing crazy eights and baking cinnamon rolls. Go »Abortion Aborted
Earlier this week, The Onion published another eyebrow-raiser: Actress' Abortion Written Into TV Show, with a photo of Leah Remini. Later that day, it changed without explanation into the much tamer Apple Unveils New Product-Unveiling Product. (link) Normally they never back down from a legal challenge or controversy, and good taste obviously isn't a factor, so I wonder why they changed the article. Go »Obama Criticizes Obama Over Rising Gas Prices
I was going to share this fake news article that I drafted in a chat with friends...Stopped at a DC-area gas station to fill up his motorcade, President Obama groaned as he watched the numbers climbing ever higher on the pump. "God, why don't I get off my ass and do something about the price of gas?" Go »
