Confession: I wasn’t much of an athlete in high school.

Oh, it’s true that a friend and I dominated the badminton unit in gym class one year. And I also held the school’s shuttle-run speed record. Oh — I was a cheerleader, too. (A very geeky cheerleader, as you’d expect.)

But that’s about the extent of my athletic prowess.

Except, of course, for bowling.

Yes, I was on my high school’s bowling team. (What? Your school didn’t have a bowling team? I’m sorry about that.) AND I participated in the school’s bowling club for four years.

Which made me practically a professional bowler.  With an average of 130 or so.

In college, my friends and I occasionally visited the lanes for a little late night bowling fun. Chad and I spent many a date at the bowling alley. I even went bowling with my future in-laws the first time Chad and I visited them together (at which time I very impressively bowled three strikes in a row).

But then, sometime after I became a mom, bowling pretty much ended. Babies and bowling alleys don’t go together very well. Besides, I was tired. Given a free evening, I’d just as soon stay home with a good book.

There have been a (very) few scattered bowling outings since C. (11) was born, but if we don’t count Wii bowling (wherein, by the way, I am  Pro), I’ve only bowled once in the past six or seven years.

Until last Thursday.

AMF bowling lanes has a very cool program — Kids Bowl Free. Yes, free. Well, you pay for shoe rentals. But at participating lanes, kids can pretty much bowl 2 games per day — free — all summer long. And for $25 dollars or so, you can add a couple family members to the program and then they can bowl free too. Needless to say, I signed up. The former inner bowler in me couldn’t resist.

So on Thursday, C., L., and I fortified ourselves with some Panera bagels, and then headed to the bowling alley.

We had the place to ourselves. Seriously, not another bowler in the place. It was great, except when a certain four-year-old allowed his bowling ball to smash onto the lane. Violently. Twice. I couldn’t look around as if it must have been someone else’s kid. There was no someone else.

L. was good for about one game. After that, he’d had enough. But who could blame him? After all, it took about 5 minutes for each of his balls to reach the pins. That would be exhausting for anyone.  It was okay, though — C. and I were happy to help him with his second game.

C. said he had a good time. He experimented with various ball weights, progressed from tossing to rolling the ball,  and was the first one of us to get a strike. He ended up with two strikes, in fact — very impressive, I thought.

As for me, well, it took a little while to get back in the groove. In my very first frame, I got a total of 3 pins. Yes, three. Total. And we were in a lane with bumpers (for L., of course).

I finished my first game with a 104 (which I totally didn’t count, because my ball hit the bumper *both* times in the tenth frame and obviously, they should have been gutter balls). My second game was a vast improvement — 149 (see? even higher than my high school average!). I probably shouldn’t count the full 149, though — I think one ball got a little help from the bumpers. So we’ll say 140. Still, not bad for a rusty old has-been.

Overall, bowling with the kids was a fun adventure — one I hope to repeat several times this summer.

Besides, you can’t beat the cool footwear.