How exactly am I supposed to feel right now?

I got home early last night and found that my brother was chilling on the couch watching television.  He asked if I felt like heading out and bowling a few games, but I was planning to hit the gym so I declined.  I just wanted to grab a quick bite to eat and then hang around until it was time for my workout.

After kicking back for a while, I suppose the result was inevitable.  It was Saturday night.  I had just wrapped up a long shift.  I was in no mood to lift weights, walk on a treadmill, or do anything else that struck me as utterly boring.  So we headed out to bowl a few games.

The bowling alley wasn't busy at all when we arrived, so that was good.  We ponied up the rather steep $25 for an hour of bowling and then tried our luck.  Neither of us was doing terribly well in the early going, but we were doing okay.  174 and 192 for me in the first couple of games and 138 and 151 for my brother.  Pretty standard.

Then things turned a little sour.  There are 40 lanes at Novi Bowl.  There were maybe six lanes in use as we got started.  After we rolled a few frames, the geniuses behind the counter, for whatever reason, decided to assign three young men to the lane right next to us.  As in - right fucking next to us.  That's nice.  And just for good measure, these guys were not bowlers.  I don't mean that they weren't good bowlers.  Plenty of us aren't good bowlers.  I mean that they weren't up to speed on the etiquette of the game.  You know the deal, right?  When the dude next to you is about to roll, you keep your ass back and wait your turn.  These guys didn't know the deal.  So our efforts to squeeze in four quick games were derailed by frequent interruptions from our unnecessary neighbors.

Then we got another little surprise.  We had started bowling at 11:30pm.  Apparently, at midnight on Saturday, it's time for Glow Bowling.  Woo hoo!  Lights off, pins illuminated by black light, shitty music on the PA system.  Woo freaking hoo.  That sucked.  I don't even remember what I scored over the final game and a half.

So we fast forward to Sunday.  I started work at noon and had a fairly easy four-stop run.  Three stores in the Flint area, one in Frankenmuth, and then back home.  Whenever I'm home early on Sundays, my brother and I tend to go bowling at Novi Bowl.  There was a bit of a bad taste left from the prior evening, but Sunday nights are more of a familiar commodity.  None of that bullshit from Saturday night has ever happened to us on a Sunday, so we headed out to roll a few more games.

We arrived shortly after 9pm and ponied up the rather affordable $25 for three hours of bowling.  Game 1 wasn't pretty (142), so I wasn't too optimistic regarding the rest of the night.  My first game tends to be my best game.  Then various body parts start to hurt, my skills degrade, and my scores get worse.

Right on cue, my arm started to hurt after the second game (a more respectable 186).  I tore ligaments in my elbow many years ago and it has never been quite the same since then.  I can usually manage the pain as I go about my rather mundane life.  Bowling on consecutive nights, however, proved to be difficult to manage. 

Halfway through the third game (eventually a 167), things were getting pretty bad.  In addition to the unnatural strain that bowling places on one's throwing elbow, the game also puts extra pressure on the opposite knee.  That hurts after a while.  And, in the case that you happen to be fat and out of shape, a little pain in the hip comes along for the ride.  Something had to be done.  I keep pain medication and medicated topical patches in the clipboard that I carry at work, on account of that nagging spinal situation that hasn't gone away since back in the day.  I keep that clipboard in my car when I'm not working.  So I headed out to the car and raided the clipboard.  A few pills, a topical patch, and a few pitchers of beer... let's give it a shot.

After slogging through a few more painful frames and taking a little extra time to rest, the medication(s) started to help a little and I started to feel like I might be able to get my money's worth out of the night after all.  The following game (221) seemed to validate this line of thinking.  I was still in pain but the pain was dulled.  I was able to put my normal torque on the ball and propel it with a decent amount of velocity.  That was nice.

So we decided to go ahead and roll at least one more game.  And here's the part that we storytellers like to call 'the big reveal.'  You'll recall last week when I took the opportunity to boast here about a couple of nice shots that I managed to pull off.  Two shots among many bad ones - not really all that special.  Twelve strikes in a row [edit to clarify: I made the first strike in the following game to bring the consecutive number to twelve.  There were, of course, only eleven strikes in the 290 game itself.], on the other hand... just look at it.  No, seriously, take a minute and... just look.

(Of course this post was just another thinly-veiled attempt to boast about my bowling, but you read the whole thing, didn't you?)

In all seriousness though, how am I supposed to feel right now?  Thrilled that I just bowled the best game of my life?  To a certain extent, yep, I'm feeling that.  Pissed that I drilled the pocket in that first frame and drove the ball right past the 8 pin?  Yep, that one has surely crossed my mind more than once.  One fucking pin away...  Son of a...

Or, given that I tend to be more of a big-picture guy, am I supposed to face the reality that I will probably bowl another thousand games in my life and never come close to this level of performance again?

I don't know man.  It was fun though.  I know that much.

(We got one more game in before midnight.  180, for those who might have been wondering.  Lots of spares but only a few strikes.)