Update 7/25/20 I don’t actually sometimes work in a bowling alley anymore. I quit a few months ago. But I do still hear the siren call of the lanes and absolutely adore the owners, manager, chef and staff! It’s a #luckystrike to have them in my life 😀
I sometimes work in a bowling alley.
And by sometimes, I mean, whenever I’m in Jackson working at the airport.
Yes. I just typed that I work at a bowling alley.
I have my reasons. Stop judging me. It’s flexible, I love the owner and staff, I can trade shifts whenever I want and nobody depends on me for anything but food and booze. And  most importantly, it pays the psychologist. And by pay, I mean it pays the first installment of 600. My psychologist’s bill is basically like a mortgage. Except at the end of the process you’ve bought them a house instead of yourself. But who wants a pool? #toomuchupkeep
I have shame for waiting tables in a bowling alley because I’m 43, and in my mind waiting tables is something you do just until you get your master’s degree or your acting career takes off. It’s what you do in the interim until what your are really suppose to do ie. your real life, starts.Â
Since I don’t have my masters, am not an actress, and am always looking for ways to avoid my real life #kiddingnotkidding. My only option was to wait tables. Okay, not my only option, but a decent option.
Dude. It’s good money.
I think part of the reason I have shame telling people I work in a bowling alley, is that I haven’t quite reconciled that this is my life.
I remember being 21 and freshly married. Yes I did just type freshly married at twenty-one. Although the truth is I was actually married at twenty. Yes. I do realize now that the human brain isn’t fully developed before you turn twenty three. Which might explain a few things….
I digress. I was 21 and waiting tables in college, young, hopeful, goal oriented and incredibly naive. I didn’t know then, the way life could swing without gloves, and that you were suppose to duck. What did Mohomad Ali say? Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee? I could add the adage, “Drop like a fly.”
Anyway, I had felt sorry for some poor sleep deprived fellow co-worker who was still waiting tables in her forties. After watching her unload the last dish from her heavy tray after midnight, I declared to some friends, “If I’m waiting tables in my forties, you have my permission to shoot me!” And God heard me. And laughed. Which He frequently does when parting the clouds to peer down at me. In fact, basically I was created for the sheer purpose of entertaining Him.
I am basically the duck bill platypus of humans.
In my mind saying “Bowling Alley Waitress” conjures up some kind of white trash vision  I have associated with a bowling alley, despite the fact that it’s actually located in Jackson Hole, Wyoming so it’s gleaming, trendy, modern, swanky and five stars sweet. Nevertheless, when conveying to someone I’ve just met where I work, especially if they have never been in Hole Bowl, I cringe. I imagine people think I wear a prescibed pink and white zipped back one piece dress with coffee stains on the skirt, have a cigaret dangling from my lips and call everybody hon.  In fact, I remember being introduced to the new Skywest GM by my current GM as “Have you met Joanie yet? She works in a bowling alley?” and it was all I could do not to duck my head in shame or start babbling a list of my achievements, spewing out statistics of how many on time star flights I’d had, awards I’d won in middle school, my college GPA. Anything to bolster my image!
But then I remembered I was going places, since the bowling alley was actually a step up from the Glue Factory where I used to work 🙂
In fact, I might still be there if I hadn’t developed that bad glue sniffing addiction and had to quit because it was hard to find a 12 step glue sniffing addiction meeting that didn’t conflict with my stripping schedule.
You know what I mean hon?
We all do what we have to do to take care of who we have to take care of, that’s what you do when you’re a mom. Unless of course that means taking care of yourself. Don’t be daft! No mother I know actually ever does that!
#collegeeducation
