Unnatural Man. Part the First. As part of the liberal arts program at William & Mary, a requirement was that all students take two credits in phys ed. Active body, active mind, I guess. Being in Colonial Williamsburg, you'd think that they might have offered a course in hoop trundling or stilt walking. But I was disappointed to find neither listed in the course catalogue. WTF? I thought this was ye olde country? However, I did see bowling listed, and since they did play lawn bowling and nine pins in colonial times, I decided that would have to be close enough.*

So I got a sticker put on my registration sheet at the 8a.m. open registration session that guaranteed my place in Bowling 101. No fancy computer registration back then, kids. And with that, I began my glorious first year of college.

Once a week on Mondays, I would ride the Bowling Bus (a yellow schoolbus that said "Bowling" on the front) from campus out Richmond Road to the AMF bowling centre. AMF = Always Means Fun. And for 45 minutes or so, we would bowl two games in our own lanes. Then it was back on the Bowling Bus and back to campus. The primary course objective was to improve your bowling average from the beginning of the semester to the end of the semester. I put myself in a difficult position by bowling a 216 the first game, something I've never again done since. And yes, there was a written final, but it didn't have any questions about who won the ABC national tourney in 1934 (it was the Stroh team out of Detroit) or how many 300 games Eddie Lubanski bowled (11).

Now, this class would have been awesome on its own. I knew that when I signed up. But what I didn't know was that the class would bring something incredibly unnatural into our lives. Because also enrolled in bowling was Unnatural Man.

Who is Unnatural Man? Tune in for Part the Second to find out.


*My reasoning was hardly like this. I thought it'd be cool to go bowling once a week, and I'd forever be able to say that I took bowling in college.