Old Bowled

I was walking Chandler with a few of the neighbors the other day, and the little kid from next door asked me why I walked so slowly.
"I have a bad pain in my knee.", I told him,
"That's what happens when you get old."
"Really?", the kid said, "You don't look that old."
I could have kissed that child. Except he is only about eight years old, and I don't want to go to jail, and he wears glasses, so maybe he isn't seeing me so well.

A few years ago I returned to bowling after being embarrassed out of the league by Mark. I like bowling, and I'm glad to be back, but the longer I bowl the more apparent it is that I'm getting older. In the mid nineteen nineties my bowling average hovered around 180. When I returned to bowling about four years ago, I couldn't get my average above 150. This season my average has been scraping the low 130's. First it was my eyes that went bad, couldn't see the lane very well. Then my elbow developed tendonitis, couldn't hit my mark anymore. Now it seems I've developed torn cartilage, and arthritis in my knee. That causes me to toss the ball down the lane instead of rolling it.

I don't know why I keep bowling, other than it gives me an excuse to drink a few vodkas, and gets me a night out without Mark. Which leads to the reason I was embarrassed out of it the first time. It involved Mark running all the way down from our lane, twenty lanes over to where the league secretary was, and screaming at the top of his voice that the secretary was a cheat, and a liar. Over the din of balls crashing into pins, and the rock music blasting, I could hear the high pitched squeal of Mark's voice. Words like 'cracker', and 'bitch' wafted across the alleys. It seems that the guy had changed our score on the sheet after we had left the week before, and this put a bug up Mark's ass. The evening was a bit tense after that, but I thought it would all blow over. That was until we walked into the bowling alley the next week and found the league captains having a vote to kick Mark out. We saved them the trouble and quit.

I was invited back to bowl on the league some years later, but without Mark. We still see that league secretary once in a while. He doesn't bowl anymore, but he is a waiter at a restaurant where Mark and I often eat. Of course that's more Mark's problem than mine.