Bowling Under a Star Speckled Sky

Help! The time-space continuum seems to be breaking down. Yesterday's senior picnic barbecue seems like ages ago and today day seemed twice as long as usual.

I woke up at the ungodly hour of 7:45AM on a day I don't even have school, and after failing to force myself back asleep I reluctantly got up. Given nothing to really do until Dutch's grad party at 6 in the evening, I made myself breakfast and began what would end up being a three and a half hour marathon of The Sarah Jane Adventures (A Doctor Who spin-off for those not as nerdalicious as me) on Syfy. After a brief respite for a series of conversations on Facebook, I returned this time to my laptop and watch the Andrew-Justin storyline from Desperate Housewives on Youtube (and they say our generation is lazy, pff).

Gimme some of that, please.

Tired of television, I decided that I should probably get myself moving again and go for a run/ab and upper body workout (got to look good for summer y'know). My workout consisted of a run around my neighborhood which is 2 miles or so in the end (way off) and a series of 40-30-20-10 crunches woven together with a 20-15-10-5 series of push-ups (actually stuck to). After a shower, I got lunch and some graduation gifts for my friends I finally got ready for the party.

We'd been told we would be allowed to use the pool so I packed my swimsuit and towel and got ready to leave. When I arrived, I stuffed my face with all sorts of delectable foods Dutch's mom, the cooking goddess, made, leaving nothing on my plate like the food vacuum I am. The party itself was rather dull to be perfectly honest, many people were there, but in the end, it was just the normal mix of people separating off into groups and gossiping. When the party moved outside, I mentioned to one of my friends a suggestions he made that we should go bowling one day. Well, as things work out, one thing led to another and seven of us (host included, I'm not that big of a douche) went to our local Bowl America for a late-night all-you-can-bowl special.

When we first walked in, we noticed something peculiar - half of the pretty packed 40-lane alley were people from out school, weird. We got to our lanes and got bowling. Now, I don't know how often you guys go bowling but for a sport that involves hurling a heavy bowl down a greased stretch of wood into a set of ten pins all for the sake of knocking them down, it's pretty damn entertaining. In the first ten minutes, we cheered, laughed and high-fived more than we had at the past two hours at the party, friendly competition made things even more fun. For me at least, one thing I personally enjoyed about the time at the alley would be that when I wasn't bowling, I got to just sit and watch the hot skinny semi-hipster guy in the lane next to us bowl. He was so much better than all of us and every time I made eye contact with him, I'd quickly turn my head back to the screen, pretending to concentrate on the rather dismal scores before me.

By the time we finished our second round, hot-hipster man had left but to our right was a new group of teens our age from a different school. They were just as loud and excitable as we were but one guy caught my eye. He wore a pink and white striped polo and walked over to the empty lane hot-hipster guy had left to get a ball for his game. He too was kinda cute, not terribly attractive, but enough to catch my attention. I didn't give him too much of a thought as we went through our third and final round for the night but caught one last glance as me and my group of friends got our stuff and went to return our shoes. Pink-polo kid was siting on another guy's lap with his arm around his shoulder. Now I knew some guys who did this as a bro-bonding experience, but this definitely was not one of those situations, this was more. I half-smiled as I caught one last glance of the pair as I walked away, thinking "god, I want that" with every step. By the time we left it was about 11:30 at the humid air was as thick as ever. I dropped my friend Dutch off back at her home and went home myself.

Final surprise of the night, my mom greets me at the door with "guess who called while you were gone". Crap, did I do something wrong? "who?" I innocently inquired. "Mr ______, your sixth grade history teacher." "What?" It turns out he saw me at the Varsity Awards Banquet last night when I won "Scholar Athlete" for crew and remembered me. In the back of the program, all the seniors had their names and college they were attending listed and he saw I was headed off to Georgetown. He had called to congratulate me and told my mom to have me call him back.

Am I surprised? yes. But I'm happily surprised that one of my elementary school teachers would actually remember me and take time out of his way and make a personall call of congratulations. So Mr. _______, I will be calling you tomorrow afternoon, and thanks for a sweet ending to what was initially a slow day.

Graduation countdown: T-minus 1 day


All the best,

JP