Rack'em Up and Knock'em Down

It's interesting that even in Paradise you can find the things that you least expect. Case in point...Bowling. When we first passed it I thought, why would anyone want to spend time inside knocking wooden pins over when they could be outside enjoying the great Florida winter evenings? I stand corrected. This is the second time that we have ventured over to knock the white pins down. The group got bigger on our second visit as word spread of the fun. Walking into the bowling alley here for the first time was rather strange since we were greeted in the parking lot by women in beautiful evening gowns and high heels. The men were dapper in their fancy shoes and tuxedo's. What kind of place is this? As soon as we walked into the alley it was like stepping into your mommas house. The familiar sounds and smells usher you in. The same colorful carpet lines the way to the counter where you find the elderly lady wearing a leopard print outfit complete with rhinestone reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose. She is spraying something into the shoes that have been returned. Somehow this magical spray will soak into the worn leather and kill anything. One can only hope.
Once the fancy multicolored shoes are laced up one can't help but break out the Micheal Jackson "Moon Walking" moves in the slippery toed shoes. I glide across the carpet to the large ball rack and start inserting my fingers into the holes until I find one that fits like a three toed sloth gripping a coconut.
At this point I notice the nicely dressed people are celebrating a wedding and are cutting the cake. Holding their champagne flutes high in the air as the couple starts their new life together...IN A BOWLING ALLEY! How appropriate, I guess, as his "new" wife will now have control of the balls in the family. Bowling balls I mean.
The game quickly becomes competitive and the trash talking flows smoother than the beer from the pitchers. Muscles start to ache as they are thrust into squatting positions and twisting gyrations that would leave a yoga master proud. The laughter is a continuous sound along with the sound of rolling balls and crashing pins. I sit back and take note of how a simple game can generate so many different deliveries of the ball. There is the no bending at the waist approach where the ball is dropped from waist level and received by the wooden floor with a thud. You're expecting any minute for the ball to be swallowed up by the old weathered wooden lane. Then there is the approach of throwing it really hard in hopes that it will cause a major quake on impact and explode the pins in every direction. I call it the Shock and Awe approach. There is always the "Poet" approach in the group, where the bowler tip toes to the line and delivers the ball while it lightly kisses the floor as it glides down the lane with a poetic curve only to end with a shower of white pins. And, unfortunately, there is the Washout Approach where it seems there is always a huge rain cloud over the alley and everything gets sucked down the gutter only to disappear at the end of the lane into a black void in the floor. The pins are all still standing in attention and in formation.
Bowling. Who would of thought that even in Paradise one can play and still have so much fun.
You might be wondering how we did since this was a competitive game. Lets just say that one remembers the humbleness of losing when the best bowler that night grew up watching black and white shows and was 30 years old the day you were born. I can only hope that when I get to 70 I'll still have that competitive fire and be able to whip up on some cocky young thing.