I’ve had a complaint that this blog is too “techy”, but I think that’s what more people would be interested in than my life. Does anyone, outside of my teammates and a few immediate family members, really care that my Monday night bowling team took 3rd place in our league this week, or that my Wednesday night bowling team took 1st place in the league last week?Yes, I bowl in a ” coed, young professionals, social” bowling league. I had to lie about my age to join, because the pull-down for the year of birth didn’t pull-down far enough for me. I guess they didn’t believe that anyone older than 55 could lift a bowling ball. I teased the league about that so much that they have since re-written the entire website for the league so now I have revealed my actual age on the website, but many other features of the new website, like “Past Leagues”, no longer work so I can’t say exactly when I started bowling with them. The old website also used to Email “virtual” trophies to anyone who broke 100. The new website is more geared to mobile devices than desktops, which is understandable in this age, but I really miss the Emailed trophies.
Here is a totally unsolicited, and unpaid, plug for the league, www.betteroffbowling.com, which hosts leagues in over 35 cities around the USA. I first started bowling with BetterOffBowling (or BOB as they sometimes refer to it) almost 8 years ago, when some of my coworkers at Morgan Stanley asked me to join their team. In the ensuing years all of the others have dropped out, but for some reason I have remained with them, often bowling in two different leagues in the same season, like the Monday night league and the Wednesday night league that both just ended. You’d think that after all these years of bowling pretty regularly that I’d get good at it, but you’d be wrong. I don’t think my average in the league has improved much after almost 8 years of bowling regularly. I’m still pleased when I break 100, which doesn’t always happen. Each league that I sign up for these days I create a team (usually named “Alley Oops” something) and then open it up to all of the “free-agents” and invite them to join me. Free-agents are what the league calls the people who sign up without having a specific team that they want to join, and they are often people who are new to the league. This is a way to meet new people, as well as to keep active and get out.
So what does all this have to do with the fountain of youth? I think back to the oral surgeon I went to when I was 10 years old to have an impacted lateral incisor removed. When I went to the first appointment I was chewing gum, which I seem to have done a lot of at that age. He had me spit out the gum and he then mimed putting my gum in his mouth, stating that this was the way that he stayed young. I think he was then about the age I am now, if not older, but was refusing to retire. I don’t think this is the secret to eternal youth, just as I don’t believe the stories where vampires have to drink the blood of youth in order to achieve eternal youth. On the other hand, I do believe that you are only as old as you act, so hanging out with younger people is my secret to staying young. Holly teaches an undergraduate class at NYU each year in order to stay around young people and it seems to work for her, too. Ryan always tells me that he hopes that when he reaches my age he’ll have half the energy I that I have. I’m just hoping that this world still exists when he reaches my age, in another 32 years.
Enough of this, now you see why I usually stick to “techy” posts, because my non-techy posts are boring. Still, I hope some of you found this somewhat interesting and I hope to expand on some of these thoughts, as well as posting some more techy and non-techy stuff, in the future.