Amanda Takes Off...

While we were in Minnesota, we went bowling.

My mother was given a bowling ball (fitted to her hand) by my grandfather more than 20 years ago. I decided to give it a try. Although my hand span is not the exact same as my mom's, it was pretty similar and I was enjoying the ball.

Until the fourth frame of the first game, when it never came back from the return.

I reported it to the kid on duty and he ran in the back to get my ball.

Several minutes later, the ball return starting...smoking. It smelled like burning rubber and smoke was billowing forth from the return.

Hmm.

Some other guy walked up and the kid and the guy started examining my ball. Finally, he walked over and asked if the damage on the ball had been there before.

The ball had deep, deep grooves and scratches in it. It was so scratched up that I couldn't even hold it because the dinged-up finger holes would've torn my skin. My mother's name had become "TER-scratch-scratch."

Finally, after days of back-and-forth phone calls, I was told they're going to replace the ball.

We'll see.

Yes, I Know That's Not a Bowling Ball Bag

So. Since my last day of work, Good Man and I have gone to the beach for a weekend, visited Newfoundland, gone to my Grandparents' and spent a week with my parents.

I finished knitting a dress in about a month.

Good Man got his license.

Good Man met approximately 50 family members this summer. He hasn't met two cousins (and their spouses), and some of George's side of the family. Other than that, Dad's family is knocked out, and so is Mom's. And he's still alive.

And now summer is done.

Preplanning for the new school year starts tomorrow and I am not ready. Dammit, why can't I have just one more week? Or month? This summer was awesome.

When I was in high school, I became friends with a guy. We were...a very odd pair of friends and most of our friends would say with astonishment, "You're friends with [him/her]?"

He was new to school our freshman year and while I thought we met in science class, he remembers it differently.

"I remember exactly how we met. I was sitting in the library," he said yesterday over brunch, "and you walked straight up to me, sat down, and said, 'You're that guy who thinks he knows everything about God, aren't you?'"

I blushed and laughed, Good Man almost choked on his brunch, and Thinks He Knows' wife laughed and nodded. "I'm so sorry," I said.

"No, no, it's OK," Thinks He Knows said, "That was a pretty good description."

Thinks He Knows and I would sit in science class and passionately debate evolution. In photography class, we work on our projects and debate the existence of God.

Our sophomore year he disappeared (home schooled), but he returned junior year. Somehow we ended up taking Spanish together at the community college (our junior and senior year of school, I went to the community college full time). Thinks He Knows would pick me up in the morning and we'd listen to Christian music while driving to the school.

While he was reading "the endtimes are near" books, I was reading really radical 60s and 70s feminist philosophy "men are evil, let's go live in the woods without them" books. We would passionately talk about our books, the other sort of gritting their teeth to deal with it.

Well, Thinks He Knows and I have both mellowed out a bit since high school. We've changed. We saw each other once, two years after graduation. He had just proposed to a woman who he was...not dating. She's now his wife of eight years and they have a beautiful, happy baby together. While religions (or lack of religion) have not changed for either of us, the forcefulness in which we believe we are absolutely right has mellowed out, and the practice of said beliefs has changed. Political views have changed a bit.

In other words, we've both grown up.

We emailed each other a few times when I was in Korea (he and his wife taught in China for two years). And then we reconnected on Facebook. We weren't able to meet during either of my spring visits to Minnesota and I really wanted to be sure we got to meet on this trip, so we scheduled it early in the trip. Good Man and I were invited to their home for a wonderful brunch. (As a side—I have got to get the French toast recipe his wife used. So delicious!)

And we just fell into conversation as if ten years hadn't gone by at all. It was wonderful.

Over brunch we tried to figure out why we got along so well in high school despite being polar opposites in just about everything. Thinks He Knows said, "I think that we respected how passionate the other was. We might not have agreed with each other, but we just thought almost everyone else was stupid, because they weren't passionate about anything!"

That's probably it, actually.

A Decade Later

Saturday, over dinner, Good Man said, "I want to go bowling tomorrow."

I stared at him. The three pre-Grandpa times we went bowling together, I had to beg Good Man to go with me. "Really?"

"I think the lanes are narrower here," he said.

"No, same size. It's just that Grandpa taught you how to bowl and now you like it."

"Yeah, that too."

***

We went bowling with Grandpa twice at the bowling center he took over nearly 30 years ago (Treasure Lanes, now my uncle is the primary manager, since Grandpa retired about five years ago). Both times we bowled three games. Grandpa taught us how to pick the ball properly, a little lane etiquette, how to adjust where we stood to pick up pins, as well as how to bowl.

"Seriously, I can't just pick up the ball by sticking my fingers in it?"

"No, do risk dropping it on your foot."

He also complained that women always wear bowling shoes too small. "Your bowling shoe needs to be a half-size bigger than a regular street shoe. So when we mark a shoe a 9, it's really a 9 1/2. The shoe needs to be bigger so your foot can slide. I got so tired of women not listening, buying smaller shoes and then complaining when their toes broke the fronts of the shoes!"

Grandpa also showed us how fingers should fit in a ball. He picked up his bowling ball with two fingers and curled it into his palm. "You try it," he said.

"Grandpa. There is no way I can pick up a bowling ball with two fingers."

After our last bowling session with Grandpa, Good Man had broken 100 for the first time. I, however, was not doing as well. Grandpa patted me on the shoulder and said, "You need to find one style and go with it, because you are trying to change too many things." My aunt joked that was code for "find another sport."

***

The night before we left Florida, we went to a local Italian restaurant together. I had convinced Grandpa to let us treat them. At the end of the meal he wanted to leave the tip. We decided to arm wrestle for it.

Grandpa beat me.

I am both ashamed and awed to admit that.

Good Man shrugged. "What do you expect? He can lift up bowling balls with two fingers."

I pulled the stubborn granddaughter card and paid the tip anyhow.

***

Last night we went bowling. The local place has all you bowl Sun-Thurs for $6.99 plus shoes after 9 pm. The lanes weren't as well-kept as Grandpa's lanes, I don't think. But hey, we made do.

Good Man's scores beat mine overall, which made him happy since he was in a one-sided competition with me. Over eight games his average was 99 and his three above-100 games were 120, 102 and 113.

I was trying to get over 70 consistently, since my previous three games had been something like 40, 80, 50. All of my games were above 70, so I was rather pleased. My average was 90 and I had two above-100 games, which were 103 and...139.

Now that 139 was a lot of luck, but I was thinking of Grandpa's advice. Don't think so much. Relax. Look at your mark, not the pins. I wish he'd been there to see it!

In fact, when either of us messed up, we'd scold each other like Grandpa. "You were holding the ball!" "Do you know what your mark was? Because it wasn't where you put the ball." "You're thinking too much!"

At one point, Good Man landed a pin in the gutter (beyond the reach of the sweep). A few frames later, a pin ended up on the lane.

I went to the service desk to tell them about the pin. While I was waiting, a woman was there to meet her friends. The clerk asked what size her shoe was. "Do they run big or small?"

The clerk sighed and said large.

"OK, I'll take a 6 1/2," she said.

I tsked her in my head.

There was a family of five bowling next to us. A teenager went to pick up her ball the wrong way and...dropped it. I looked at Good Man, my eyes wide. I guess Grandpa was right.

Once, Good Man hit one pin and we thought that was it. A few seconds later, five pins decided to jump up in the air and fall over.

"Did you see that?"

"That was weird."

I managed to pick up a 7-10 split, which was some impressive luck. Good Man is getting really good at picking up the 10 pin for a spare.

At one point I had the 1, 5, and 8 pins standing. Somehow I managed to knock down the 5, but nothing else.

"Did you see that?"

"That was weird."

Grandpa, Grandma, and Good Man

Today we left Florida. Today, my grandparents celebrate their 62nd wedding anniversary.

Last night Good Man and I poked around in the photo albums in the guest bedroom. Their wedding and honeymoon photos—my God, my grandparents are gorgeous at any age. Grandma in her bikini on the beach in 1948 with a little smirk on her face? She looks like a movie star, especially with her Army Air Corps husband by her side.

We found Grandma's high school photos, and Grandpa's military photos. We also found photos of my aunts and uncles growing up. We found old church directories. And I found photos of Johnny and me at a very young age.

A few nights ago, Grandpa stayed up with us chatting for three hours. I learned so much about him, and about our family. When we finished chatting, Good Man said to me in private, "Sometimes I wish I lived 100 years ago."

"During the Japanese occupation?"

"Well, maybe. It just seems like those times were more interesting than these."

Sixty-two years is a long, long time. I raise a toast to my grandparents. Happy Anniversary to them!