Sometimes there are glaring gaps in my pop culture upbringing. I was born in 1977 but I never watched Star Wars until 1995 (and I didn’t like it). I’ve never eaten a Coney Island hot dog, yet I live in a city with at least five Coney Island hot dog joints I can name off the top of my head. And I’d never been bowling. That changed when I saw a cheap Groupon for a bowling alley a couple of miles away. Nik had only been bowling once, when she was a kid -- candlepin bowling with her dad. I’ve seen The Big Lebowski a few dozen times. This was the extent of our experience.

One day before the Groupon was due to expire, we headed out on an a light afternoon to get two hours of bowling done. I could go on at some length, but it was brilliant. I sucked, and Nik was slightly worse. My best score was an 80-something, and I think Nik had a 70-something. The best was the people-watching, discovering everyone else’s swings. A kid at the next lane over with his (I presume) grandparents had a weird move where he stood facing the lane like a rifleman in a firing squad, held one elbow cocked up and out, hopped on one foot, and somehow the bowling ball popped out and rolled along the lane. His best score was, I noticed, 144. A serious-looking gent farther to our right had a kind of swish-scoop move, what Nik called The Crane Technique -- he held the ball far up and behind him, and ran with it to the foul line, then cannonballed it toward the pins. He smashed them every time. The kid’s (I still presume) grandmother, frail and lankhaired, would waddle up to the line carrying the ball out in front of her with both hands as if it were a sack of potatoes. I’d look away, at the computer or at Nik chucking ball after ball directly into the gutter, and look back at the (let’s just say) grandmother, and she’d somehow managed to knock down five or six pins. This was not good enough for her, and she kept saying, “Bah,” and eventually gave up. Nik and I went scoreless for great stretches of time. On our left, a woman in a pink fleece jacket was talking on a cell phone with one hand. With the other, she carried a bowling ball leisurely to the line, placed it down on the lane, and walked away while still chatting. She sat down while the ball rolled toward the pins and talked on the phone. When the ball returned, she took it, and -- almost annoyed -- dropped the ball back on the lane and walked away again, still talking.

So yes, I can’t wait to go back.