The first time team Bowl Movement and I walked into Diversey River Bowl, a smoky, 85-year-old woman in a wheelchair and raggedy 1987 Ditka’s Dash shirt held the door open for us. Her eyes had a happy, knowing look with the hint of a sigh. It was a look I imagined a grandmother giving her architecture-loving grandson who decided to go into the family Wallstreet business. Welcome. I remember when I was you. You have no idea what you’re getting into. It’s going to be a wild ride, but it’s an addiction that’s going to take its toll.”

She was right. Little did we know our lives were going to change forever that night.

Ok, that might be a little dramatic, but bowling is so much more goddamn awesome than I ever realized, and Shauna Madden will always hold a special place in my heart for setting up a company bowling league and bringing the smells, sounds and camaraderie of Monday Funtimers league play into my life.

Trust me when I say you need to join a bowling league (especially considering your non-drinking activity alternatives if you live someplace cold are improv classes, SUV marathons or charade nights).

Here’s why everyone should join a bowling league, and a few things I learned during my first magical year on the lanes that can help you make the most of your first bowling league experience.

It’s OK if you suck

This was initially my biggest hesitation. Bowling 77’s for two straight months and getting smirked at by grown ass lumberjacks with beer bellies wasn’t super appealing to me at first. But you get so much better. And these lumberjacks turn out to be gregarious tools salesmen who teach you card tricks to play while bowling. Here’s the one we learned:

• Everyone puts in three dollars.
• Every strike is worth two cards
• Every spare is worth one card
• The best 5-card poker hand at the end of the 10^th frame wins
• You can only have 5 cards in your hand at a time, so if you bowl a turkey right out of the gates, you have to discard one card

The $2 PBR’s and Busch’s are also flowing, so that helps you bowl more strikes, or at least makes you feel OK about not breaking 80.

In any case, you will get so much better over the course of the league, no matter how bad you are when you start. I raised my average by about 30 pins by the end of the 8 times bowling, and had a personal best 208 when I hit the lanes one weekend in-between league matchups (had an African mosquito-sized itch).

Even if you never get better, the camaraderie, people watching and interior decorating tips you gain are well worth your time.

You need a good team and bowler name

The first night, in approximately ten minutes, you have to choose a team name and a nickname for yourself that shows up every frame you bowl. It is a reflection of your coolness, and you don’t want these to be lame. There are no bumpers on creativity at the lanes, so let your mind wander to the gutter and put a little thought in before hand. (Three Fingers In was probably the most perverted, aka the best, name in our league. You can do better.)

The first game is handicapped

Don’t bowl out of your mind the first night, no matter what you do. Nothing will be more frustrating than starting every head-to-head match 80 pins down. Do some Malort. Work on your hook spin. Look at different arrows on your approach. Try to throw a 16-pound ball as hard as you can. Repeat. The league managers will tell you the handicaps adjust every week and it doesn’t matter. But it does.

Bring a good luck relic starting week 3

We picked up this little trick of the trade after bowling next to some 63-year-old ladies who’d rub a little wooden Jesus for good luck before each of their turns. It was magical. Strike, spare or gutterball, Jesus always had a plan and morale remained high.

We went with an autographed Pete Weber photo. Get yours here.

A relic will get you through the hard times and give you extra momentum during the good. The reason to wait until week 3 to choose your relic is because you need to learn a little bit about your team. What makes them tick. What will inspire. What will light a fire when you need a team four-bagger in the ninth frame to stay alive against two-ton Tina, scary Jerry and the rest of team Spare me the Details.

Knowing bowling terms helps

As with any sport, bowling has countless wonderful terms unique to it that can be gleefully heard over the rolling thunder of league play. Here are five quick ones I picked up listening over the course of our 8-week league, googling bowling terms at work and watching the Sunday TV finals on the Classic on ESPN (these are a delight btw.).

• Maple moxie: It’s the tenth frame and your team is down 21 pins. It’s going to take some maple moxie to come out with the W.
• Bicycle aka Barmaid: When one pin is hidden behind another
• Carrydown: A lane condition where the oil conditioner gets pushed down the lane. Lanes with lots of carrydown make it harder to hook the ball and scores are generally lower.
• Beer frame: The fifth frame is the beer frame. The player with the lowest score this frame treats the group to some cold beers. (adding your own stipulations like this will perk things up. One absolute rule is two straight gutter balls by any one player equals a round of Malort shots.)

You’re also going to want to figure out your bowling style is, especially if you’re a power stroker.

Bowling will now be in your activity rotation

After probably the fourth week, I fucking loved bowling. The open frames frustrated me all week and I experimented with new ways to get more hook spin in my work’s bathroom. I dreamt of bowling a 200 (par for professional bowlers), and I had more to talk about on my weekly parent’s call.

Every one I talked to after Christmas break last year went bowling when they were home for the holidays. You should do it this Thanksgiving to work off that turkey and yams. Date night got spruced up. Friday and Saturday night had a new activity sheriff in town. Bowling was now tossed out with going out to eat, comedy shows and seeing American Sniper. The alley > Cooper, Bradley. Having this new option was unexpectedly exhilarating, like in high school when you got a new foreign exchange student and they turned out to be awesome.

Once every two weeks is enough

Some leagues are every week. Ours was every other Monday. This felt so right. Starting off, the bowling alley is not a place anyone still with life/career/dating aspirations wants to be too often. It’s sort of like being handcuffed to the bed (what up 50 Shades of Gray fans!) or spin class. Once a week is probably too much but after 13 days your body is yearning for it.

You will see the bartender a lot

If you’ve always wanted to be a regular at a bar by where you live but haven’t fulfilled this yet, a bowling league will check this off the list.

It’s not just about bowling

It’s important you like the people you go with, or at least think there’s a 90% chance you will like them once you get to know them You’ll be talking to strangers and hopefully sitting around after your three games to shoot the shit. We talked about the circumstances under which we would wear Uggs, why girls like decorations with their initials on them so much and many other things more fit for your imagination and not public consumption here. It was glorious. I imagine this is how Socrates and Aristotle got down.

One night about five weeks into the league we were sitting around, PBR’s in hand, talking about what it would be like if the earth was flat and businesses we’d like to start when a feeling washed over me. I was done. Hooked. I now understood the look the old lady bowling Yoda gave us on that first night with 100% clarity.

There was a jacked, tatted young man bowling alone with a tall glass of merlot in front of us at 9 p.m. on a Monday night. I didn’t think it was weird. I was jealous. How did he get here?  What’s his story? What was he hoping to find? Why didn’t he have something better to do? These are reasonable questions for you to ask.

Not me. I knew the answers to all of them.