Sunday night, Don and I were 'social'. We 'went out' and 'did stuff with other people'... the dog was confused. Where did they go? Why aren't they at home? His company's holiday party first, held in the hotel. I've gotten so used to working with a very small group of people that seeing the crowd that Don works with is a little overwhelming. Where I work, you know not only your coworkers names but their life stories as well. Where Don works, half the people there are on a nod-and-smile-because-you-can't-remember-their-names basis. Afterwards we changed and went to play darts with some friends from the bookstore.
Darts. Who knew? I have always stayed away from darts, and anyone who knows me and my pitiful klutziness would understand why... sharp pointy objects being thrown? Not a good idea for Mara, right? I kind of figured that I would completely, totally suck at darts, extrapolating from 'sucking at pool', 'sucking at bowling', and 'sucking at all sports'. But darts is so much better than any of those things! First of all, anyone can at least hit the dartboard at least most of the time.
Unlike bowling, where the ball will dive into the gutter any chance it gets, or pool, where maybe you get your ball in, or maybe you accidentally get your opponent's ball in, scoring a point for them, or maybe you get the cue ball in, which for some reason doesn't count. But in darts, once the dart is thrown at the board, there's maybe a 30% chance of it hitting something that is helpful for your team. For example, twice I hit a bulls-eye (the little red circle in the middle, for the uninitiated) and once got a triple-19, just by sheer dumb luck. That almost never happens in, say, bowling, where so much strength and skill is required that luck doesn't count for much. And, my arm didn't even hurt the next day. Also, in darts the total score is scribbled on a chalk board, but unlike electronically-scored bowling, nothing is keeping track of every gutter-ball in an embarrassing fashion, showing a neat line of zeros marching alongside your strange bowling-alley abbreviated name.
Don loves darts. He is wonderfully skilled, but is that any surprise? Any game played in a bar, he is good at. He used to hustle pool. He plays left-handed to give himself a handicap, to make it more challenging. Sunday was the first time in maybe six years that he's played darts and he still kicked ass. At the end of the night, when Jen-from-the-bookstore-and-Co. were determining when we'd play again, it went kind of like this: "So we'll do this again two weeks from now, and Don, you come and PLAY ON OUR TEAM and oh yeah, Mara, you come too..."
And Don's playing again after so long, it's like reigniting a fire, or falling off the wagon or something. On the way home, he rhapsodized about the many ways we can now incorporate darts into our lives... "We can buy darts! And a dartboar, and hand it in your room, and we can practice at home before going out! But not the cheap plastic kind... real darts"
What have I done?
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2 comments:
I'm glad to hear you're making new friends.
The following is a true story: I once threw an errant dart at a dart board in my friend John's apartment. OK. Actually, in a moment of silliness, I got down in a football stance and hiked the dart through my legs. It missed the board completely and seemed to actually disappear. We searched the entire area for it and found nothing. We even moved the refrigerator and the couch. Even a month or so later, when John moved out and removed all his furniture, the dart was never found.
It must have bounced to somewhere inconceivable - up above the rafters or on top of the ceiling fan, or something. Either that or it was beamed up by space aliens or spirited away by the dart gods. Whatever the case, we never saw or heard from that dart again.
The mystery was never solved.
Ben, why do I have the feeling that much beer and perhaps Irish car bombs were involved in this dart mishap?
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