The Two Bowling Parties

Life has been pretty good the last two weeks. By surprise, MARINA dropped half of her album three weeks in advance, so I’ve been listening to that. I haven’t started a new book since I finished my last one on April 1, but I’ve been re-watching waaaay too many Game of Thrones episodes in the meantime, trying to get myself prepared for its season premiere (which was two days ago). And the weather in Michigan is being its typical sporadic self – warm, cold, rain, brief snow, sun. But at least I felt confident enough to put away my boots for the season.

Unfortunately, I feel like I haven’t been as productive as I should have been. Not sure what to do exactly with the dress I mentioned in my last post. I ended up ripping out all of the stitches along the new waistline because everything was looking too bulky. So now I’m not sure if I want to pull out all the manufactured stitches and basically do heavy re-designing or not. I also haven’t done anything in the decluttering department either.

But in a surprise twist for me, I’ve actually had quite the social life the past two weekends. Yay for leaving the house and hanging out with friends!

During the first weekend, one of my friends threw herself a “Grad School Completion Party.” So off I went to celebrate her accomplishments and go bowling, even though I haven’t bowled in a few years and I’m not super great at it. (I only had one gutter ball during the whole two hours, so I was doing better than I thought would. And I was never placed last, so overall, I did okay.)

We took up four lanes. So, twenty people were actively bowling. And then 7-10 people arrived later, who obviously didn’t bowl, and just hung around and conversed with others. It was nice talking with people who I haven’t seen in a few months during the downtime I had while waiting for my turn to bowl. I think my friend, who was the one hosting the party, said it best when I saw her again two days later:

“So many people showed up! I didn’t realize I had so many friends.”

And I sat there thinking, “I didn’t know I had that many friends either!” (Sometimes I forget how many people I actually know/are friends with, not being on social media and all. If I don’t see them on a somewhat regular basis, I have no idea what’s going on in their lives.)

But we weren’t the only party at the bowling alley. Halfway through our reserved time, another party started arriving at the neighboring two lanes. A large bouquet of pink balloons was fastened to their table, and all sorts of small children started to show up.

I stood there wondering why a parent would host a little kid’s birthday party on a Friday night at around 8:30 p.m. Isn’t this almost their bedtime?

Then I saw someone bring along two more balloons. These were gold-colored and foil, not like the rubber pink ones. They were shaped into two numbers: a “3” and a “0.”

This wasn’t a children’s party next to us; it was someone’s (who was probably a parent) thirtieth birthday.

It was a bizarre feeling, comparing my group to theirs. Because even though I didn’t know everyone’s ages at my friend’s gathering, I knew a majority of them, and the large age range we had that night was 22-32. None of us have kids, there was only one married couple, and another was engaged. Yet, the new thirty-year-old next to us was probably married with at least one child. How different our seasons of life were, despite being relatively around the same age.

I wonder if anyone from the other group ever looked over at us and was reminded of their younger days. I hope it made them smile. You know, before they went back to wrangle their kid.