Graduation from High School: an excerpt

The four years of high school would soon be over. I hadn’t wanted to attend high school at all. It seemed like a waste of time. Why couldn’t I go straight from eighth grade to college? But my parents told me it wasn't an option. 

Somehow, I’d survived the four years. Four years of feeling like a misfit, walking the halls between classes to get to the next class. Halls lined with football players in their letterman’s jackets scoping out the girls, catcalling, making comments and laughing. I was so aware of my glasses and my studious, bookish look. But I'd shown them. It was straight-A’s all the way through. Except for one class, that is. 

Bowling. I’d signed up for it my freshman year. The class met at 7 am at Cloverleaf Bowl. My thinking was that I could get P.E. out of the way early in the day, and have an excuse to be on my own and out of the house in the morning hours. I felt so grown up and independent, taking the city bus to the bowling alley three times a week. I never missed a class. 

Not that it mattered. I was a terrible bowler. There were a couple of reasons for this. One reason was obvious, and the other reason took me years to figure out.  

Here’s the obvious one: I was put on a team with two cute guys, both of whose names, incredibly, were Dave Smith. But they couldn’t have been more different.

Tall Dave was the son of a local farmer, and he was lanky but strong. His bowling style was similar to my dad’s: he threw the ball hard and by sheer momentum, sent the pins flying and ricocheting around with such force that he'd get a strike. Accuracy mattered less than strength. And he had that. 

By contrast, Short Dave gathered himself way back at the end of the lane, went inside himself for a moment, and with perfect form, glided forward, releasing the ball with finesse and accuracy. Short Dave bowled like a dancer. 

Each of them, in their own way, were good, and I spent most of that semester trying to figure out which Dave I was more attracted to. In the end, I opted for Short Dave. 

But my choice hadn’t resulted in a date with either of them anyway. The only outcome was that, while contemplating the matter, I'd thrown a lot of gutter balls and ended up with a “C” in the class. It was my only grade below an “A” in all of high school, which meant that I was salutatorian (#2), not valedictorian (#1). 

The other, less obvious reason is that it turned out that I had really bad astigmatism, so any sport that required hand-eye coordination or the need to judge spatial relationships accurately was not going to be something I'd excel at, even if there were no Dave Smiths involved. Sigh.