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Smiling!
No idea I took
the picture already!
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Honestly, I thought I was a bit out of pocket to even hint that I knew anything about her business. She didn’t know me.
We bowled in the same league for years, and I’m sure she knew my face, but besides a passing, “Hey,” which was probably more a product of courtesy than interest, we had never spoken. I respected her, though. She was a bowler, not just a chick in the alley. She kicked ass, beating men and women with no apologies. And though you got the inkling that, after she was done on the lanes, having murdered the competition, she was gloating on the inside, she had true swag – confident humility. She is the bowler I hope to be “when I grow up.”
I was used to seeing her in the highly competitive fall/winter league we shared but was surprised to see her in summer doubles league last year, and (to bring this back to my first point) I guess that’s what made me actually say something to her.
I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I remember how I felt. I was going through “a thing.” Every day during that time, I woke up feeling my insides churning with anger and frustration. And because I was emotionally ill, my health was failing. What can I say…I had been hurt (and that’s an understatement) by yet another one of them. And I heard she had been done even dirtier than I. Her conspirators surrounded both of us, flaunting their offenses. For enduring that with a smile on her face and her focus on the lanes, she was the epitome of class in the "Bruce Book of Bad Bitches." A lady, shown best in what she didn’t do. Not that she couldn’t have done something. She just chose to deal with it in her silence about the whole situation and corrected people who needed it on a case-by-case basis. (I was privileged to witness one of these encounters.) Watching and evaluating her situation from an extreme “outside-looking-in” position made me feel free enough to walk up to this woman I only knew from her reputation of being called over the front desk microphone in the alley to come and collect all the money she had won from beating the hell out of people on the lanes and tell her what I already thought she knew – that she handled herself in a manner that rivaled that of Jesus’ treatment of the Roman soldiers who beat the hell out of him in that brutal 30-minute sequence of Passion of the Christ. I didn’t use those words, but that was the sentiment. She smiled about it and told me something I already knew – it wasn’t easy. We spoke more often after that, and I made it clear that I was working on my game so we could bowl together (one day), but we still weren’t “friends.”
Fast forward in our bowling lives and we’re back in the summer league 2011. I bowled against her, bowled the best I could, and she was impressed. A few weeks later, I cracked under some family issues, and she was the one who put humpty-dumpty back together again. Gave me her number. Told me to call her so we could talk. Was she serious? My full-scale weirdness isn’t for everyone. Didn’t know whether I should expose her to it or not…
And then I remembered what having lady friends is all about. Acceptance…PERIOD. You don’t put on airs with your lady friends. You let them see you in all your embarrassing ugliness. You let them see you and judge for themselves. And nine times out of 10, they don’t see the pathetic “you” that you see in yourself. They see beneath it all. There’s no other reason they would bother looking.
Having a lady friend with a bowling hand is an added bonus for me. Truth is there aren’t many ladies to be found in the alley, let alone friends. The alley truly exposes the consequences of the problem of Eden. It being “a male world” in there, a thought that permeates through the entire place so heavily that even the pots (bets in the bowling alley) are segregated, females often find themselves clamoring to be noticed. They use various tactics and tricks, but only the ladies with the bowling hands know that none of that is necessary. It’s a bowling alley. If you want to be known, understand the sport, play the game placed in front of you, and, no matter what, only let them see your passion for it. In simple terms…bowl. Nothing else there really matters.
And now the philosophy…if everything does indeed happen for a reason, perhaps the band aid over my twice broken heart is proof that there is someone who understands where I’m coming from and is an example of what I can do with my experiences. Perhaps a broken heart can end in (as she calls her “him”) an "other half." Perhaps not. But knowing that there’s someone on the other end of my sarcastic text messages to reply with a smile and a kind, reassuring word (or a well-placed tough one) makes it easier to face myself with hope…and become more comfortable with being me…even if that is…this. Thanks, KP!
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Once she knew I was taking the picture,
she tried to act like she wasn’t flattered and gave me the half smile.
She was saying to herself, “Take the picture lil girl,”
as she likes to call me…
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