Happy New Year, everyone!

Just like last year, and the year before and so on, I hope you all had a great night doing whatever it was you were doing, and hope that it doesn’t take too long adjusting to writing “14” down in dates.

I think October was the last time this past year when I wrote “2012” or “xx/xx/12,” so with a bit of luck, I’ll be correctly labeling dates by this coming August or September.

In all seriousness though, I hope you all had a fun and safe final day of 2013.

While I wasn’t planning on doing so, I apparently risked the lives of dozens of people on December 31st.

How?

We went bowling.

I remember bowling one night a few years ago (I think it was the opening weekend of the 2010 NFL season) with some college friends.  Outside of one guy who was on a bowling team, we were all pretty terrible.

That said, I don’t recall being as terrible as I was this past Tuesday.  The first frame, I had two gutter balls.  Not like, “oh it just missed” gutter balls, but two “if there wasn’t a gutter to safely funnel the ball down the lane, I would have killed a large number of innocents” gutter balls.

Oddly enough I followed up that miserable attempt with a strike in the second frame, but unfortunately that achievement turned out to be a blip on the radar as I ended up scoring just 81 by the end of the game.

We played another round, and somehow I managed to be even more awful, one point going three straight frames without hitting a single pin, and finished with a 52 or something.

52.  Out of a possible 300.

If you were to ask me if I was bummed out by my complete lack of bowling skills, I’d probably say no… but 52?  I should never be allowed to bowl again.

It’s the safe thing to do.