To Bowl or Not To Bowl

That's never a question. I just do not do it. At least not how normal people bowl. So my friend inviting me to bowl on a blind date was a mistake that she should have prepared for and one for which I cannot take entire responsibility.
I don't even remember his name. I feel a little bad, but that's just how un-memorable of a date it was. And I generally tend to block out all bowling experiences anyway.
Now, I feel that I'm overreacting - it was not that bad of a date. It was more embarrassing if anything.
It was a double - blind for me and my date. (Strike 2 - we were at an unfair disadvantage. All right, fine, I'll stop complaining.) I heard we were going bowling and I groaned inside. Maybe audibly...I don't remember.
Ok, before I go on let me tell you about my love, or lack thereof, of bowling. I am terrible at it, and I hate being terrible at things. However, I have discovered a little technique that keeps me from falling dreadfully behind the scoring average. Unfortunately for my teammates, it's very noticeable. I bowl backwards and upside down! I think it's clever and unique, but not everyone else does. Don't get me wrong-I try it the natural way for a while, but I give up on that quickly. I guess it helps my score, just not my dignity.
Anyway, that doesn't really have anything to do with my date; I just wanted to talk about how much I don't like it and what I have to do to entertain myself while doing it.
So, first things first: I wore sandals to the date. I forgot that you have to wear those crazy clown shoes and therefore need socks. So I didn't have socks, and instead of going home to get me some, they had this neat little vending machine at the bowling alley that dispenses socks for just such dorks as me. I thought it was the coolest vending machine ever, though from what I hear, there are vending machines in Japan or Korea or somewhere over there that dispense underwear. That trumps bowling socks by a large amount of coolness. So anyway, my date bought me some of these socks. They were four dollars and had little bowling pins and bowling balls on the cuffs. I really liked them, despite being in a stupid bowling alley for a blind date. Anyway, to make a long story kind of short, we bowled, I probably did a little backwards bowling, (though most likely not a lot, since it was a date and all) and then we went to a park. I don't remember why, but I know I was in a tree. Maybe we were playing hide-and-seek? It sounds like something I would have suggested. After that, we went to my friend's house to play video games, (I like video games a lot more than I like bowling) and then we were done and went home. I don't remember a lot about this date, but what I DO remember is that I was deliberately being unsociable and taciturn. (Warning: I might quote Pride and Prejudice a lot more.) I didn't even give the poor guy a chance because I was so convinced that this was going to be a craptastic fiasco simply because I didn't know the guy and of course because we were going bowling. He didn't make much of an attempt to make conversation with me either, but that could have easily been overcome had I made some sort of effort to make it more of an enjoyable experience.
Just because we don't think things are going to go well and we won't see this date ever again anyway doesn't mean that we can't try and make it fun. That's what dates are supposed to be: fun. We never know if things will work out or not, and deciding beforehand is the worst mistake we could make. I haven't been on many blind dates since then, but after that I've always tried to at least create an acquaintance with my boys (as they shall hereafter be known as).

P.S. I think those socks finally died out only a couple years ago.