KNOCKING over skittles while wearing silly shoes is a uniquely depressing activity reserved for the most tragic occasions. Including these.
Your birthday
Getting older and closer to death is sad enough, but repeatedly rolling polyester balls down wooden bowling alleys makes these annual reminders of mortality even worse. Bowling on your birthday is a sign that you’ve exhausted more exciting alternatives like a fancy meal or karaoke, and have resigned yourself to a gradual decline. Many happy returns!
Office party
The only thing less appealing than bowling with friends is bowling with strangers you happen to share an office with. There’s the awkward small talk over a crap lager while you wait for your turn, the public humiliation as you bowl yet another gutter ball, and the dawning realisation that you’ll have to get pissed with these knobheads in the pub afterwards. You’d rather be at your desk or off sick.
Going through a divorce
Where do people go while the life-altering paperwork of a divorce is being processed? Home’s obviously a write-off. HR gets funny if they find people sleeping under their desks. And sofa surfing isn’t acceptable once you hit 30. Just like churches, the bowling alley is always there as a refuge for doomed souls. So long as you f**k off and kip in your car once they close.
Awkward first date
Bowling is better than the cinema because you can actually talk to each other, but that’s where the positives end. You’ll spend an hour demonstrating your lack of sporting prowess, and then your inability to swallow your petty anger when you inevitably lose. Plus any conversations you might have enjoyed will be drowned out by the clatter of skittles. If you arranged this date, expect to be ghosted.
To forget
Like an old sea dog looking out at endless rolling waves, bowling alleys are a perfect place to go if you want to forget. You don’t even have to bowl. You can just sit there in the shadows, watching the pins getting knocked down and reset again and again for hours until the pain goes away. But it never will, not entirely.
