Always read the room, specifically the floor.

Did you know why you shouldn't walk past the line on a bowling lane? I didn't. I'm a forty--cough--something year-old adult, and until yesterday, I didn't know this.

"Yeah, we knew."

-everyone in the world, evidently

Why anyone would willingly agree to
not only watch, but entertain fifteen kids
that aren't even theirs is beyond me.

I was attending a friend's child's sixth birthday party at the bowling alley/family fun center and--huh? Yes, I did a sport yesterday. I even knocked down most of the pins each, uh turn? Period? Whatever a bowling match is divided up into. Let's say quarter. Doesn't matter, the point is I acquitted myself quite well and ate three entire slices of pizza I knew to be terrible and yet kept coming back for more. Anyway, back to my humiliating discovery of a fact that literally everyone in the world knew but me. 

No, I don't know how much they make,
but it's a safe bet they're underpaid.

So we're bowling, when one of the kids--I don't know who's, kids all look alike--anyway, one of the kids got their ball stuck in the gutter. The bowling alley has these automated bumpers that can be deployed to eliminate the frustration and entire point of the game, and this particular number was damaged and causing the bowling ball to get stuck. We kept having to call the underpaid bowling alley attendant whose job it was to retrieve it and I felt badly for them and took matters into my own hands. "I'll get it!" I said, heroically striding up to the stricken bowling ball.

Above: some dumb idiot haplessly
attempting to cross into the forbidden zone.

To be clear, on the floor there is a line that separates the place where one approaches the lane and the lane itself. It's known as the foul line, and beyond it is a forbidden zone where none may tread for fear of incurring a penalty. There is even a warning not to do so, but there was this kid whose bowling ball was helplessly stuck in limbo so I figured I could just grab it and we could all resume the game. I figured it was just against the rules of the game to cross that line, I didn't realize there was an actual slip hazard.

Pictured: me, yesterday.

Interestingly and in the defense of the bowling alley proprietors, the aforementioned warning reads: SLIP HAZARD--DO NOT CROSS THE FOUL LINE. Ok, what followed may have been at least partially on me. Upon crossing into the zone and triggering an unimpressive alarm buzzer, I, as the kids might say, wiped out. My feet flew out from under me and I comically sailed into the air. Like Icarus I had flown too close to the sun and for my hubris was pushed. Mine was a humiliating prat fall, which, to the credit to those around me, was met with concern and not the peels of laughter such as I deserved, but for real. 

Fortunately, the only thing injured was my pride, and possibly my ulna, we're still waiting for the x-ray.* I tell you this not to illicit your sympathy, nor to amuse, but to urge you to heed warnings you read on the floor of bowling alleys. 

How could I possibly known?

*I'm just kid, I kid. This is America, I can't afford an X-ray.