Keep Your Eye on the Ball (or You’ll Catch the Ball with Your Eye)

I’ve gone bowling twice in the past week with my boyfriend, Jonathan. Neither of us had been bowling for thirty years, and it was long past time to give our abysmal heavy ball-rolling skills another shot.
When I was a teenager, I bowled frequently and miserably. The highest score I ever achieved was a 76—and that was my fifth game, at eleven years old. I was pretty proud of this, as my usual scores were in the 20-30 range, with much more frequent double gutter balls than strikes or spares.
The time I got that 76 score, I earned a reputation as “queen of the body fault,” meaning that I flung my body down the lane before releasing the ball, sometimes ending up face down in the alley. My ball often bounced haphazardly—and in that particular game it bounced three lanes down from the lane we were playing in, and miraculously slapped down every pin for my first-ever strike. Unfortunately, that strike was recorded on another player’s score card.
I tried to warn Jonathan that I was an absolutely awful bowler, but he insisted he was worse. He claimed his lifetime high score was 49. I found that hard to believe. I thought he was just trying to make me feel more comfortable about my ineptness so I’d fulfill his misguided urge to re-pursue bowling.
The first four frames, we both hit all double gutters. Our final scores were me: 39, him: 27. The second game we improved by nearly 25%: me: 48, him: 39. The teenagers in the next lane were laughing at us. We, however, were ecstatic over our rapid rate of improvement.
Four days later, we couldn’t wait to get back to the lanes. On that second bowling-go-round, we more than doubled our previous scores, and I beat my old record with a winning 90, while Jonathan scored a career-high 91 in our third game.
We were so elated by our accelerating bowling skills that we decided to play catch in our backyard when we got home, to work off some of our excess energy.
We tossed the baseball gently at first, but with each successful catch, we built up speed and distance. We were good, oh yeah, we were so good together! It grew dark, and I was no longer able to see the ball, being quite night blind. But still feeling zealous, I kept playing, using the sound rather than the sight of the ball to judge where to place my glove and get the catch.
That’s when it happened. The ball came at me so fast that it made a whirring sound on its approach. That’s when my eyeball reached out and caught it.
The dictum, “Keep your eye on the ball” took on a whole new meaning as I detached the baseball from my bloody eye socket.
Jonathan rushed toward me when he heard me scream. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” he said, tears coming to his eyes.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I replied, holding back tears myself. “I’m the one who had my glove in the wrong place. I should’ve had the sense to know not to play catch after dark.”
We hobbled inside, Jonathan guiding my wobbly legs, woozy stomach, and already swollen-shut black eye into the bathroom. He tended to my wounds, gently wiping the blood from my tear duct and eyebrow, and tenderly patting my swollen cheek with rubbing alcohol.
“Wanna play catch again tomorrow?” I asked, mustering a grin and a gleam in my remaining functional eye.
“Only if you promise to keep your eye on the ball, and not the ball on your eye,” he said. “Or maybe we could go bowling and try to break a hundred. But then, the way I bowl, I might end up taking out your other eye. And that’d be really poor form for a boyfriend,” he said. “I’d feel terrible if I blinded you bilaterally.”
“But it’d be great fun if we could both break a hundred some day,” I replied wistfully.
“That can wait for some day when you can see the bowling lane with intact depth perception and not one eye blind.”
“Okay,” I conceded. “Then let’s just make love tonight, quiet and gentle. That I can do blind.”` It was the first time I’d ever made love with an ice pack on my face. Technically, I think I would have qualified for the disabled list, but I felt like I’d scored well over a hundred—far surpassing my batting average.

Tagged as: Baseball humor