I was
admittedly a little apprehensive about this second meeting with my conversation
partner. It all started off well and
good. Earlier in the week, she had
invited me out to go bowling. I love bowling. I don’t mean to brag, but I was in a bowling
league in my youth. (There’s really not
a lot to do in Indiana.) So needless to
say, I was pretty stoked. However, early
that day, Alejandra texts me and says that none of her friends wanted to go, so
it was just going to be her and her 12-year-old brother.
Oh.
Here’s the thing.
Children aren’t exactly my cup of tea.
I don’t particularly like them and I don’t think they are necessarily
big fans of me either. I was the baby of
the family, and I never had any young relatives, so I never had to do
babysitting duty. Honestly that was for
the best, for everyone’s sake.
So here I faced a dilemma. I told her before that I would go, and I didn’t
want to flake out on her to now. But I
had also only met her one time before, and already she’s introducing me to the
fam?! (This is moving too fast.) In the end, I decided to suck it up and
go. I mean, how bad could it be?
She drove by campus to pick me up. I got in the car and introduced myself to the
12-year-old sitting in the back seat. He
apparently had his elevator pitch all ready to go because he started spouting
off his life story. He is in seventh
grade and loves math, but hates geography (amen, kid, don’t we all). He wants to be a scientist when he grows
up. But his true passion is video
games. He regaled me with tales of his
adventures in Call of Duty and Left 4 Dead for the entire car ride to the
bowling alley. And then again during the
entire bowling session. You could tell
that his sister was a bit annoyed with him, but I didn’t mind. I love video games! We bonded over favorite characters and
weapons of choice (fists or chainsaw, obviously). He was talking so fervently about the subject,
even I got a little lost at times. He
was pretty much a typical 12-year-old boy: too much energy with too short of an
attention span.
When we arrived at the alley, we got our shoes and
assigned lane and we all went to go pick out balls. I was testing the finger holes in a
twelve-pounder, and one of the male employees comes up to me and says, “Are you
sure you don’t want something lighter?”
Oh boy, if looks could kill. “No,
thank you, this is perfect,” I responded, and sashayed away. I’m no militant feminist, but come on. I bet Susan B. Anthony was rolling in her
grave.
If we
learned one thing from our time together, it’s that we all suck at
bowling. I felt kind of bad that Jesus
kept getting gutter balls, so eventually we raised the bumpers. He did a bit better, but there was still room
for improvement. But that’s when
something special happened. Before he
was about to roll the ball, his sister walked up behind him and tried to
demonstrate the proper technique. I
thought it was probably one of the most adorable things I had ever seen. It just goes to show you that familial love
spans all cultural lines. But in spite
of the assistance, things weren’t looking so great score-wise. In his defense, his sister’s and my scores
weren’t much better. I debated for a
while whether or not I should let him win.
I had a serious moral dilemma about it.
In the end, I did what I thought was right. (Spoiler alert: I didn’t let him win. Not even sorry.)
But
easily the funniest part of the get-together happened on the car ride back to
campus. I don’t even really remember how
this came up, but somehow we got on the topic of significant others.
“Do you
have a boyfriend?”
“HAHAHAHAHA
no.”
“Did you
leave one back home?”
“No.”
“Are you
talking to anybody?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
It was
mildly uncomfortable to say the least.
And for some reason I felt the need to expound upon the situation. I don’t even fully remember what I was
rambling about but I’m pretty sure the words “extremely single” were used, much
to Alejandra’s horror. Maybe full
disclosure about the sad state of my love life may have been a bit TMI for this
point in our friendship. Oh well. She asked.
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