On something funny that Erica reminded me of

or,

I’m struggling with writing something serious, so here’s something funny.

The last credit I took in college was Bowling. I graduated from Texas Tech in August of 1996. I walked in May with everyone else, largely because my mother wanted to see it. I would gladly have ditched the whole cap and gown thing and just accepted my diploma in the mail, but she and Ron paid for four years of school, and if they wanted a show, I figured they deserved to get it. I hope they didn’t see me nodding off during the three hour ceremony, but oh well.

Anyway, I had three classes left to take in summer school that year, and I was staying in the dorms for the summer again which was loads of fun. The dorms during the year were kind of a drag, lots of people eating crummy food, never much privacy, guys stealing my beer out of my little mini-fridge. Plus, the dorm I lived in sophmore-junior years was haunted. But whatever. Summer dorm was cool, mostly because there was only one on campus that was open. It was like going to one of those really small local colleges you see on WB television shows, where you know everyone and friends drop by all the time just to say hi. First summer session I took Spanish, a class I was being forced to repeat ( I still can’t hardly speak Spanish. It is a detestable, ugly language in my ears, not poetic to me at all, and I just can’t get my head around it. This is in no way intended to insult Spanish speaking peoples or Latinos. just a matter of personal taste. Everyone knows how much I despise racism in any form. I wish I liked Spanish, but it’s nails on the chalkboard to me. Sorry.) I think I also took a lab over again, geology. I aced the class but was forced to drop lab or fail it, largely because I skipped it almost every week. The reason for ditching lab during that specific hour of my week can not be disclosed, as she had a serious boyfriend at the time. Oops! Pretty sure he never found out. Ahh, college. Anyway……

Second summer session, I took Bowling.

That was it. Just Bowling. Two hours a day, four days a week. The class was taught by a Teacher’s Assistant, a girl working on her M.S. in Sports Sciences, essentially a Masters in Coaching. Melissa was her name. She was only a year older than I was. I made it a habit to tell her, regularly, that if she failed me in Bowling, I wouldn’t graduate. Tech required PE credits then, I think they have since abandoned it. Every day, it was the first thing I said every time I saw her, in this depserate frantic voice and with fear all over my face. I would corner Melissa, grab her by both elbows and beg, “Melissa, please, if you fail me in this class, I WON’T GRADUATE!”

She thought it was funny. At first.

Melissa began readily assuring me that no one, and I mean no one, failed bowling. Secure in the knowledge that my diploma was safe and my parents would not have to bask in the shame of a child that took more than 4 years to finish college (the horror!), we went to the bowling alley bar and ordered a beer. By the end of the summer session, we were good buddies, Melissa and I. She even dated a friend of mine. The two of us, and the other two guys on my “bowling team” within the class, which was divided into 12 teams of three, were the only people in the class old enough to drink. We drank beer in the bowling alley every day, noon to two. Everyone else in the class hated us. The final test was the tenth frame of our last game. If you bowled a strike with the first ball, you got 100 on the final. A spare got you a 95, nine pins a 90, eight pins and 80, and so on.

I bowled three straight stikes on my final. Who wants another beer?