The last one. Sweet mother of god am I ever eager to get this league over with. A night at the alley with friends while luring meeting lady tourists? Great time. 4 months of league bowling? Sure, that’s swell. I can do those things and enjoy them. But almost 7 full months of this? No, thank you. Not again.

That also means this is the last of these little bits I’ll be writing. They really went downhill fast. I think I had maybe three weeks worth of ideas for things about which to write and then it turned into a weekly bitch fest followed by a dry retelling of the previous week’s league play. You’re welcome.

Last week we, again, had only two bowlers at the game. The couple on the squad have thrown in the towel. I don’t blame them for that but I do resent them because I have to listen to Lily complain all night about their absence. He does not seem to understand that, while we all enjoy bowling, we do not wish to be shackled to it every single week for eternity. His moaning is definitely not enticing the couple to actually come out to the lanes, either. We’ll bowl again but for the fun, not the glory holes.

On the bright side, we rolled pretty darn well to finish off the year. It didn’t change a damn thing going into this week’s roll-off and prize handout-apalooza but it felt good to not be ground into pulp out there again.

Game 1 started out hot for me. I had a perfect game going up until the second frame. Still managed to put up a 142 to pace all bowlers. By 30 points! Everyone was struggling that game which allowed us to chalk up a 48 point win.

Game 2 started and I sunk right back to the gutter with a 111, one of their lot had a 142, and we got rolled by 30 points. A dead heat and we went into the third game with fingers at the ready, itching for an upset.

Game 3 was tight. Whoo boy. They had a 147 leading the way but also two 98s. My 125 and Lily’s 129, plus the absentees, gave us just enough to claw out a 2 point victory and a 23 point margin for the overall. 5 out of 7 points and not a completely embarrassing blowout sweep like the last several Tuesdays.

I call that going out at medium height. Out of 18 teams in the Tuesday league we ended up 4th in the first part and 17th in the second. Overall that was good for only 16th but our high game was better than 3 whole other teams. Simply dripping with warm, milky promise. Or we just suck.

I’ll take and it and run to tonight’s long-anticipated roll-off. Hopefully the team is all there. They’ve assured me they will be but also are highly unreliable and very annoyed by the complaints process. We will see what transpires – other than Lily asking me what else I’ll be doing on Tuesday and me responding “anything else” – it’s a mystery. I will update as we go so there will be no reason to re-live the (assumed) vicious beating next week.

Enjoy bowling in moderation, folks. It can lead to a constant, nigh irresistible urge to hurl your friend from a moving car and never look back.