Heath has bowled in a bowling league since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. His entire family bowls(and in some cases, coaches), so it’s pretty natural/normal for him to be in a bowling alley. The league he’s in started back up in the end of September, and with the exception of one night, I’ve gone every Wednesday, to cheer him on and socialize. Over the course of the past few months, the girls in the league have gone from standoffish to welcoming, and in recent weeks, downright persistent about me joining.
This league is made up of a lot of couples, with a single here and there. Since I wasn’t interested at the beginning of the season, Heath was paired up with another single in the league, and I didn’t think anything of it. Last week, the 4th on his team was too overloaded to make it to league, and Heath started bugging me to sub in. I agreed, as long as I had to do none of the work to bowl, and since he held up to his end of the deal, I held up to mine. One of the women offered at the end of the night to give me an old ball of hers, and we generally talked about it, but didn’t nail down any specifics.
Tonight, I barely made it back from Des Moines in time to join him for league, but we got there. I look to my left, and in comes Janet, carrying a bowling ball in a box.
5 minutes later, Jan, one-half of the couple on Heath’s team, comes up to me, asking if I want to make my spot on the team permanent, claiming that the 4th now has a more permanent time commitment on Wednesday nights, and they need a replacement member.
5 minutes after that, Janet comes back up to me, asking if I am officially joining the league, because they can shuffle the 4th to a different team.
Heath and I started talking about it later in the evening, and he said, “It’s almost like we planned this…but we didn’t.”
Yeah, sure, he may not have, but I’m pretty damn sure the girls did. Anyway, I’m officially in a bowling league now. Does this mean I just aged myself ten years?