Life In the Fast Lanes

While killing Thanksgiving time with family, my wife and I took a bunch of nieces and nephews bowling. Bowling is not our natural sport, and the people on the lanes next to us became openly scornful not only of our technique but of our manners. The small-town bowling alley was filled with people who took bowling as seriously as I take golf, and had any of them behaved on the golf course the way we behaved in the bowling alley I'd have called for a Congressional investigation. Whatever scorn they showed, we certainly deserved.

The kids would pick up the balls and lug them forward without the requisite ritual of standing and staring at the pins. This disturbed the rhythm of everyone around us, since no one could time their approach -- is that what it's called when you run up and release the ball? -- to quiet moments when their concentration would be undisturbed. We fired away without regard for whether the person next to them was deep in concentration, the bowling equivalent of talking while someone is putting. We had no idea how to operate the automatic score-keeping machine, and every tiny technical problem became the subject of much howling and teasing. Perhaps worst of all, after rolling the ball down the lanes our apparently uncoordinated kids would fall dramatically to the side, earning big laughs from their cousins but disrupting those trying to bowl well next us.

In short, we were a disgrace.

We bowled two games. It took us, roughly, 12 hours, since most of the time whoever was due to bowl was in the bathroom or getting a snack or, in one particular egregious case, playing a video game. Even had everyone been ready when required, it would have taken us a long time because we rolled the balls so slowly.

At the end of all that, the high score for the day was 112, banked by my attorney brother who was in an actual bowling league while younger and more foolish. He tried to keep us in line, but we were unteachable. In the end, he focused on his own game and pretended he didn't know us.

It was a media scandal when Presidential candidate Barack Obama bowled a 37 on the campaign trail. I do not, for the life me, understand how anyone could bowl a 37. I am as incompetent a bowler as you are likely to encounter. Even at my best I am as graceless and out of place as a walrus at a gymnastics meet, and I was far from my best. I was still top heavy from the previous night's consumption of turkey, stuffing, potatoes, pie, stuffing, rolls, gravy, sweet potatoes and stuffing. I was wearing a stylish dress shirt as appropriate for physical activity as a suit of armor. I chose a ball that was too heavy, had holes I could barely get my fingers into, and was slippery with the oil they use to keep the lanes shiny -- but I was too lazy to take it back and search for another. And there's this: I have no talent.

Still, I bowled an 87 in the first game and 103 in the second -- nearly three times as much as the incoming president.

As we left, one of our older children dropped a ball on the tile floor and it rolled 40 feet before she could get it under control. The woman at the counter looked at me like I was crazy when I offered to buy the colorful shoes. When we went out the door, people applauded.

Comments

[Wally]

I hope you ordered a "nice vin de Pays Carignane" from the bar.

[Tom]

I did, and was rewarded with a Diet Coke, which was what I would have ordered anyway had I not been putting on airs.

[Frank]

when I was a teenager I had a friend who wanted a pair of those multi-colored bowling shoes. There was no way he was going to actually pay for a pair, so he went to the Salvation Army and bought a pair of old sneakers for like $5. We went bowling, he rented shoes, leaving the old ones as collateral, and when we were done he just walked out in the clown shoes. He wore them to school every day the next two years. Everyone wanted some after that.

[Nate]

Sounds like you had a great time. Phoey on those uptight folks that couldn't relax while your gang played.

Next holiday- try curling! You can wear your own sneakers and it's all done on the ice. Winning team buys the beer!

[Wally]

The Functionally Ambivalent house hold is in Kentucky. The last time they had something to curl on was when Little Eva escaped across the river on the ice floes.