Some companies treat their staff to a swank dinner at some trendy upscale restaurant for a holiday staff party. Or gift their employees with gizmos such as iPods or iTouches.
But not us!
Christmas at the office this year came in form of rented shoes and chucking an 8 pound ball over and over again. That’s right! 5 pin bowling at the gazillion year old Commodore Lanes, where it still smells like old nightclub. You know the smell I mean. That fizzy, carbonated smell from all that pop being dispensed over the years and infusing its odor into all the wood panelling. At least I hope that’s what that smell is.
Bowling. When the social committee came up with it, I thought this could be either very lame or very fun. And by random draw, I found myself on a team that I knew I could have dork-tastic fun on.
Here was a team where we all wanted to go all out and buy matching t-shirts and stick on letters. Here was a team that wanted to christen ourselves with roller-derby-type names. Where we could totally geek out so hard, that we may actually end up being the coolest ones. “The circle of lame”, as Selina calls it.
My bowler derby name for Team Vixen?
I am bowl-ling fury. Is the “fury” emphasized enough?
When renting bowling shoe goodness, you normally go down one whole shoe size. That would make these shoes sized 4.5! I’m pretty sure these were kiddie shoes. I had the puny-est feet in my team. But then again, I had the authentic tri-toned bowling shoes, unlike my teammates 80s looking velcro shoes.
Our competition:
Top row: Teams Dancer & Blitzen
Middle row: Teams Prancer, Dasher & Donner
Bottom row: Teams Comet & Cupid
How did Team Vixen fare? Kicking ass and taking names in the first game. I bowled five strikes and spares. Our collective bowling average was 120 and we advanced to the next round. One of the directors, Terry, sweetened the contest poker hand style. Every time a strike or spare was bowled, we’d get a card. At the end of the first round, whoever had the best poker hand won a gift certificate.
That was me! (of course)
A pair of kings landed me a $10 Starbucks gift certificate! And I don’t even drink coffee.
We must have expended so much energy with all the hooting and hollering, as well as, striking a John Travolta Saturday Night Fever pose every time we bowled a strike/spare, that we must have been completely spent by game 2.
Or it could be all that pizza the management had ordered. We gorged ourselves on pizza and now it was doing gurgly things in our stomachs. Either way, our second round was an epic fail. While other teams were getting better and better, we were going the opposite direction. That was in itself, hilarious.
The final winners?
The highest score – 180 bowled by Nagisa
The lowest score – 52 bowled by Carmen
Poker hand – pair black kings by yours truly
It may not have been dinner at some posh resto-lounge, but it was a rollickin’ staff Christmas party, opera-style. Class all the way.
2 Comments
lol… go team vixen! look at you with your cool uniforms and intimidating aliases! all you need is a little practice to focus and sustain your irrepressible power. ;D
did we go around the whole circle of lame to get back to the starting point where we’re now officially cool?
tell me we didn’t pass that start point and fall back into lame territory. or stop short and still lame.
that’s okay.
it’s good to be geeks sometimes.