Bowling

My technique is lacking

A number of my friends participated in a bowling league this summer. I refrained, not because I'm above bowling (I'm probably below it), but because the league started fairly soon after my last surgery and I wasn't allowed to lift anything over 5lbs. And the lightest bowling ball was 6lbs. "What's 1lb?" you say? Well when you're running up and heaving it down a lane I think the velocity of the ball and stuff makes it heavier. At least that's the story I'm going with.

Anyway I thought that perhaps as the weeks went by I could be a substitute on any one of the three bowling teams should someone be absent and should the team be looking for an average-ability level bowler. Thankfully none of them were. Because as I learned yesterday bowling here in North Carolina with the fam, I am not an average ability level bowler. I am far below average.

We went to a bowling alley that time forgot. It looked straight out of 1969 and smelled like your grandma's house if your grandma still lives in the house she raised all her kids in. There was nothing flashy about the place (well, except for orange the carpeted walls), and all scoring had to be done by hand. On paper. With a pencil. That had no eraser.

They did have projectors, like perhaps at one time - in their hey-day (is it "hay day?") - they had transparencies that you could keep score on and then project the scores up on the wall above the lanes in some modern new-fangled way to be hip. But they put that time behind them and went back to good ol' fashioned paper and pencil.

I'd like to think that perhaps my bowling failure could be chalked up to my brother's poor score keeping skills. But between the fact that he's an accountant and my score only changed by one or two pins every time I rolled the ball, I'm pretty sure his math was solid. It was my bowling that wasn't solid.

We bowled two games and in the second game by the time I had bowled five frames my score was 18. Five frames. Half of a game. And I wasn't even to 20. And I wasn't trying to be funny either and bowl all crazy like "whatever guys - I don't care, I don't bowl for reals, I only bowl to try different amusing techniques!" That was just how bad I was at bowling.

So good thing I never subbed on anyone's bowling team this summer. Because when you're lucky to break 80, no one wants you on their team. ...But on the plus side people do like bowling with you because no matter how they did, at least they did better than you. (Except if you're Delaney - heh heh heh).