One of the best decisions I made this summer (although there really were so many) was to join a Zog Sports bowling league with some of my coworkers. Zog Sports is an organization in NYC (and in other cities) that organizes different sports leagues and the winners of the leagues get money donated to a charity of their choice.
Our team name was an Erin original, “Did I Gutter?!” in the style of “Did I Stutter?!” The season was six weeks long with a finals week. We were somehow in second place going into the finals, which probably had something to do with the team who eventually won the finals forfeiting to us one week and our handicap of 60 points per game after the first week. We started off each Wednesday with an intense pregame like all-you-can-eat wings / all-you-can-drink beers at Mudville or $3.50 margarita’s at Latitude and then continued with beer towers and lemon drop shots at the alley.
Some of my favorite moments:
- Creating team member nicknames such as “Captain Jack Spare-O”, “Britney Spares”, “Eliot Split-zer”, and “Strike Tyson”. I was “LeBron Frames”.
- Sprinting down 9th Avenue after pregames that went a few minutes too late.
- Sprinting through the Duane Reade on a last-minute search for socks.
- A dance party the first week that may have resulted in a small concussion for one of our team members.
- Doing yoga moves on the lanes.
- Being told by one of the waiters that he was going to base a character off me in his screenplay. I still can’t figure out if this is a good or bad thing.
- Telling another of the waiters who had a less conventional first name than Bob or Jim that I had the same name as him. Talked about “our” name for about five minutes and then he decided I was lying. Showing him my ID to “prove” it and then acting like I thought he had said “Erin” was his name, even though at that point I had repeated his name at least twenty times.
- Bowling in any and all available lanes after our games and getting reprimanded by the bowling alley staff for it.
- Meeting my soulmate who bowls the exact same way as me (dance moves, doing splits and falling down in the follow-through).
- Ordering nachos that did not come with cheese on them, complaining to the waiter, being told by the waiter that they didn’t have cheese on them because it doesn’t specify “with cheese” on the menu, even though by definition, nachos have cheese on them, saying “fine”, then looking at the menu and saw the menu DOES say “with pepper jack cheese” on it. Complaining for weeks. Ordering them the final week of bowling and having all my teammates say, “yea Erin, actually the nachos DID have cheese on them that week.”
I am actually really thankful that the league is over. Thursday mornings were rough. But I could definitely see this being a next summer thing, too. Maybe I will practice in the meantime so that I can eventually break 80…I wish I were joking.
xx
10 miles behind me 