I never much liked bowling. You have to rent shoes other people have worn. There's all that alcohol and smoking that goes along with it. And, of course, you can never get a lane because those league bowlers are always tying up the lanes. That was until I, to my surprise, joined a league myself. It's turned out to be a lot of fun. The people are friendly, the smoking is gone (thanks to state-wide ban), and the drinking is at a minimum. And we don't hog up the lanes too much, as Sunday nights are pretty slow to begin with. It turns out I was wrong, bowling is not that bad. I was right all along. My little league is an aberration. We play for charity. We play for fun. We're not shy about cheering each other on, or sharing in the pain of a missed opportunity, no matter how distracting it may be. And we play on Sunday to boot. Today I had to pre-bowl because I'm heading up to Michigan this weekend. The league people made a stink about me using the empty lane next to them ... Apparently they're too good to share the bowling alley with anybody else. Their crazy etiquette requires you to wait for the next 2 lanes on either side, and when I broke this they sicced the alley management on me. Because a simple reminder wouldn't have been rude enough. And as territorial as they were, they were not at all shy about invading my area to sit and chat it up. All upset about me throwing their game off, and not at all concerned with throwing off my game. They were rude, greedy, and all in all not very nice people. Pretty much your prototypical league bowler. And now I remember why I didn't care much for bowling to begin with.