Friday night as a change of pace M & I actually got to leave work early to go bowling with forty of our closest colleagues. Granted we spend enough time with our fellow coworkers, but any time away from our desks is welcomed, even more so with $500 at stake for the winning team.

Historically I’ve been a pretty mediocre bowler, the type who is equally capable of throwing a gutterball and/or a strike in the same frame. M, meanwhile has refused to contribute to this part of the story…but I think she’s fun to watch!

At any rate I had pretty low expectations for our team, especially after the two ladies from Finance managed to Foul on each of their first two attempts. So I sat back and simply made it my goal to get 7 or better each time up while enjoying the evening. But before long the ladies found their form and if anything carried me and my other male colleague by hitting an array of strikes and spares as we merely put up pedestrian scores.

It was kind of funny because as this was happening I kept eye on the other scores and soon realized if we kept this pace we’d actually have a solid chance of winning. Amazingly enough we did and once one of the girls caught fire we all began picking up strikes and spares. Nevertheless I was skeptical that we would win even as we took the lead on the scoreboard. Somehow the math in Japan always gets messed up as, “this is how we calculate it.”

After an hour and a half of solid bowling everyone packed up and headed to TGIFriday’s across the way for food and drinks for the afterparty. Immediately upon entering the restaurant M and I began to wonder how we would be able to excuse ourselves early. Gizmo is always a fallback, but people knew I walked him earlier, so it wasn’t our strongest case. You see, M and I are wallflowers by nature, it’s what brought us together in dealing with our company back in New York. I often think of us along the lines of these two as we usually hang towards the door cracking jokes before leaving in advance of anyone making a complete ass of themselves.

But we stuck around, simply because I wanted to find out if my team had won and perhaps to get a bite or two to eat. Little did I know how wrong I would be…