Finger-Lickin' Fun

By Zach Hively

Good clean fun, with unclean balls.
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​If Covid changed anything about me, it changed my bowling game.

Just think—in the Before Times, I’d walk into an alley, fondle entire rows of balls fondled by untold strangers before me until finding one that felt just right in my dominant hand, then I’d accept a pair of shoes that had something—no one knows exactly what—sprayed in them by a teenager.

I didn’t think anything of this process. My very few friends and I, each sporting our just-right balls and our found clown shoes, would generally play a couple games until we realized we’d be sore tomorrow—unaccustomed as we were to all this handling of heavy balls.

Simpler times.

You should see these puppies under a disco blacklight.

I went bowling the other day for my brother-in-law’s birthday. Let’s call him “Scott” because that is his name. This was, more or less, my first time in a public space with unsupervised children since before the invention of face masks and hand sanitizer.

I, despite many showers, have still not touched my own face afterward.

But I can touch my own feet. Boy, was I glad I brought my own bowling shoes. I did so because I am a cheapskate. This, however, added the benefit of not imagining other people’s feet.

I do not own bowling shoes, per se, although I do own an excess of tango shoes. I brought a pair I never really use for dancing. They comply with the primary regulations for bowling shoes: namely, they do not match any reasonable clothing whatsoever.

The shoe scenario saved my feet, but the ball fondling is the same. Worse, even. Back inna day, once you claimed a ball, it was yours for the duration. No one else stuck so much as a thumb in your ball. Nowadays, it’s willy-nilly out there on the lanes. Other adults (who really should know better) will snatch your ball off the ball-return thingy immediately after licking off their chicken finger residue. And if a person is willing to lick their own digits in a public bowling alley, mid-game, then I am certainly never going to enjoy a meal again.

Yet, you know what? I still had a great time. (You might even say I had a ball.) My final score does not matter. What matters is that I got to join in celebrating Scott, and then we teamed up to dominate some of those unclean, uncouth, unsupervised squirts in laser tag.
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After which, we immediately washed our hands.