Bowl Lane Time Machine

I didn’t realize when we took the kids bowling last week that I’d be getting into a Bowl Lane Time Machine, but I will say being transported back in time to 1985 was not an altogether unpleasant experience. The kids were off from school for Election Day so I decided to invite Primo’s BFF Leigh, and her peeps to go bowling. Primo and Seconda had never been, and the last time I put on a pair of bowling shoes was at Bowlmor Lanes, in high school. Before I was old enough and cool enough to bowl in the city though, I’d go to this small. kinda rundown joint by my grandmother’s house and I swear that’s where we ended up last week with the kids.

Nothing had changed since I was 10 years old – not the machines, which groaned and moaned like it took their last gasp of breath to spit out that ball; not the balls which were more sticky and filthy than the floor of a movie theater after a Saturday night blockbuster; not the staff, who were literally my grandmother’s age and hobbled, bent over to get the balls that the kids had only managed to roll half-way down the lane; and not the music, which consisted of Beat it! Smooth Criminal, and Living on a Prayer.

Wait -- there was one thing they had which I don’t remember – gutter bumpers. Are you familiar with these Godsends? They are little rails which pop up and block the gutter, totally eradicating the possibility of a gutterball. They are meant for children, but I find them indispensable for myself, as well. That’s because my bowling style -- just like my foreign-language-speaking style, and my dancing style, and my cleaning style – relies on raw power and enthusiasm, with almost no consideration for accuracy. This means that though I can throw the bowling ball at 70 miles an hour, I will throw it straight into the gutter. But not with those gutter bumpers! Genius invention. I guess the past 25 years haven’t passed in vain.

Election Day

Besides the fact that they know how to cook and save all your childhood shit, you know what’s great about my grandmother and her generation? They totally rock the vote. They never, ever need to be reminded to show up on Election Day. I don’t know if it’s the immigrant in her, or the fact that she’s several generations closer to the days of the suffragettes or what, but my grandmother doesn’t take that ballot box for granted.

Now that she lives in our building, we can go vote together, along with my darling children, and if that doesn’t add up to a three-ring circus I don’t know what does.

“We have to vote AGAIN?” Primo complained, “We just got a new president.”

“I don’t want to go!” Sec yelled, “IT’S BORING!”

Heaven help this bunch of apathetic vagabonds.

“Oooh, you betta be quiet or da policeman gonna arrest you,” my grandmother contributed.

“WHAT? But, Mommy, you said kids can’t go to jail!!” Primo yelled.

I squinted my eyes closed, shook my head at him and made the “she’s loco” gesture towards my grandmother. She always knows just how to get the kids on board.

The panic was short-lived though, since we were just passing the Bake Sale Table at the entrance to the school where we vote.

“Ooooh, cupcakes!!! I want a cupcake! Cupcake! Cupcake!”

“Yeah! Yeah!Yeah!Yeah!”

“No, no, no, we’re about to eat dinner,” I said. I almost always say yes to the Bake Sale but it was 5:30pm and I do have a sliver of conscientiousness in me.

So we rolled into the voting area with two screaming kids, a humiliated great-grandmother threatening them with time in the clink and me, wearing this defensive look on my face which I get when my kids are really being a public outrage and I can’t do anything about it. It’s a look which says, “Yeah, I know they’re a hot mess. What you gonna do about? I’m here, aren’t I? This is my democratic DUTY, motherf&$%ers! I’m ROCKING THE VOTE!”

I managed to calm the rugrats down by giving my IPhone to the little one and letting the big one fill in the ovals on the paper ballots. This gave my grandmother a heart attack: “Jesu mio! Watch what you doing! Makea sure you coloring in da right person!”

Then the voting people directed us to those computer scanners and Nonnie had another heart attack.

“What da hell is dis?” she exclaimed.

“Just put it in like it’s a fax,” the voting helper instructed her.

Seriously, guy? You think THAT is going to clarify the process for my 79 year-old grandmother? She doesn’t know a fax from a falafel.

I slipped her ballot in and then I read the screen to her: “Your vote has been counted.”

And I will admit, saying that out loud did get me a little misty. Your vote’s been counted. Rah rah, democracy.