Join Me in Snarkville

I hope it comes as no shock to you that I have certain areas where I’m truly comfortable. Certain worlds where I come alive and shine. Ok, so there are certain places where I totally dominate the room because I’m an obnixous, over-bearing bitch with no concern for the opinions or theories of others. Oh, gee I really hope the last one is the over statment I mean it to be, lest I really need to sit down and examine my complete lack of social skills.

Amoung these “in my element” places are NOT car repair locations NOR a bowling alley.

Let’s review for a moment:

In getting one of the tires repaired on the car yesterday morning I strolled into the place that will fix said tire. I walk in and look around (attempting to be confident, because I’m convinced that dogs these men can smell fear). I see three men, ranging in age from 60 to 25, behind the counter. In front of me are two men talking to two of the worker types. I walk in and the room goes to complete hush. I think, um — this is NOT normal. I do a quick review, I’m dressed (even wearing pants), I have nothing hanging from my nose, I seriously doubt that just walking in has transformed me into a supermodel — so what the heck. Then I take a look around — I’m the ONLY woman in the room. The waiting room has one guy reading the paper, thus, I began to feel the estrogen vacuum in this place.

Ok, I think, PROJECT CAR KNOWLEDGE. So, finally after what seems like an hour (which was in fact less than a few seconds), ONE guy –I should note not the one not talking to a customer, but one guy who stopped dealing with a customer — spoke to me. “How can we help you today?” “Um, my tire. It, um, needs to be PLUGGED.” (Yep, my high end car knowledge amounted to the vocab word “plugged.” Oh, I’m cool.

After waiting about 30 minutes, I’m told my car is done. (Yippie, I can get out of here and go to my next location.) I speak to man #2 (who could also be the money man), he suddenly stops talking to me and walks over to the window and stares at the back of my car. Then strikes up some conversation about my plate. Ok, yes, it is a personalized plate — and yes, in fact, you are the ONLY person I’ve met who doesn’t get the joke — but still. Then he informs me of some random body style change in my car that is about to be released. Topping off his show of knowledge saying, “And they are coming out with a 4 door model too!” Triumphly, I declare (possibly a little gleefully and loudly) “NO. It will be suicide doors and there’s still talk if it will be one or two — though I think it will be two.” Then I promptly turned on my heels and walked out. I believe my use of both plugged and suicide doors made *THIS* place MINE. Right?

Case, the second.

Promptly after leaving the garage, I headed off to my first ever bowling lesson. I was ready. I was coming off a good night of bowling where I bowled at least 10 pins more than my average all night AND took all three of my points. So, I drive — feeling still a little cocky. As I pull in to park, I see this tiny, very old, very homeless looking man smoking outside. Suddenly, I think “I have no idea what my bowling coach looks like.” No problem, I can fake my way through this.

I walk in the door of a bowling alley at 11am. It seems a little busy to me, but ok, whatever. I walk by two lanes of SERIOUS bowler types. By the third or fourth lane, I’m seeing the expected retired guys getting out of the house group. One old guy saw me looking around and actually smille and says, “Hey, how YOU doing?” I died. Ok, step away from the creepy old guy and HOPE he isn’t the coach. Deep breath. I walk straight up to the counter and inquire. Nice lady (at the time the only other woman there — so I felt we had a bond) tells me he’ll be right back wait here. Ok, no problem. A few minutes later I meet the coach, who is nice. As we are walking to the lane, he turns and says — “You aren’t at all what I expected.” (I need to note, we’ve spoken on the phone ONCE.) “Pray tell how?” “Well, for one, you are beautiful and I thought you were in your 60’s.” Um — ok, old guy…I’m beautiful because I’m 33 and this is the land of bowling and the average age is like 100. And do I SOUND 60? on the phone? Hmm — need to do some research on that one.

Creepy feeling left as we began our lesson and I started to really learn stuff. Here’s the neat things I’ve learned:

1. Bowling is geometry. Heck, I’m good in math! I can do this.
2. Proper bowling position really is a work out — want to talk to me about how sore I was within an hour afterwards. Yup, still sore today too.
3. I was doing nearly everything WRONG. Though, my coach will say I wasn’t wrong — but now it is better.
4. When I finally relaxed and began to feel like this wasn’t some place out of my element (the math thing helped a lot), I had fun. I had fun without the trash talk, without the dinner out with Prince, without thinking about score or points. I had fun just trying to hit what I was aiming for.
5. My coach really dug my Bowling is like Golf thing.
6. It took a bit, but I think I’m finally over my horror that I had to have a lesson for a sport in which one could drink beer. I mean seriously in the grand scheme of things who thinks they need a coach for bowling. However, I learned there’s some BIG money in this — even at the lower levels — so coaching isn’t a bad thing at all.
7. And finally, TRIVIA (oh, my do I love a little trivia): in a lake any bowling bowl 12 lbs. or less will FLOAT — who knew. 12.1 lbs? Will sink to the bottom. Recently they dredged the lake outside the alley I was at and found 50+ balls. All of them 15 to 16 pounds. Now I ask, if you bowl with a 10 lbs. ball and get mad enough to through it in the lake — how much would it tick you off that would float back up mocking you?

So, my lesson was done. I have homework and hopefully by the end of it all I shall claim another place “in my element.” However, just to confirm that I in fact still was uber-cool — I went knitting — which frankly folks - I’m COMPLETELY in my element there — perhaps boardering on the over-bearing thing. But it seems they love me for it — either that or I’m just comic relief.