it's funny how things change

growing up, i never went bowling. my family did a lot of "family things" together, we were all in sports, but we just never bowled. the first time i went bowling was towards the end of my undergrad years. since then, i've been quite a few times, but i'm not really sure why i'm sharing all of this with you. to get to the point, a couple of months ago my husband decided that it would be fun to go bowling with my whole family. we'd gone with my brothers and sisters, but never my parents. what with people dying and parents leaving the country, though, it kept getting pushed back. then trying to find a time that worked when my brothers were home from school proved to be impossible so we decided to go today with my grandma, parents, and younger sister.

when i mentioned the bowling plan the first time to my parents, i thought they would say they weren't interested. but they were actually surprisingly up for it. apparently they were big on bowling before us kids entered their lives? who knows what other kind of interests they had that i have no idea about. i mean, i know my parents had lives before us, but going twenty three years without ever knowing that your parents used to bowl is just weird. 

but that's not the point either. we get to the bowling place and my parents and grandmother's reactions were hilarious. they were surprised at how "automated" everything was these days. according to my mom, the last time that she went bowling, you had to have a designated score keeper [that was really good at math] to keep track of the scores. (my dad said that the last time they went bowling was '84.) according to my grandma, she remembers going bowling when there were boys sitting on little platform things that would jump down and set the pins back up after every turn. apparently, my grandpa was one of these boys at one time. 

i've obviously been taking this technology for granted. 

*Teenage Hearts - Allstar Weekend