Unlike riding a bike, you can forget how to bowl
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- March 23, 2024
- 488
So why, you might rightfully ask, are there three bowling balls on the kitchen floor of the house my wife and I currently occupy?
And the answer, as you might rightfully expect, is complicated.
So let’s get into it.
My history with the game of bowling dates back — as so many of the best things in my life — to the late '70s, a time when not only was I supremely sure of myself, but also I was getting paid to be a writer, a possibility I had imagined, sure, but never really expected.
You have to understand that at the moment I graduated from college, I was inarguably sure of only two things: I’d be heading back to Notre Dame to accept an academic fellowship on the way to earning my master’s degree and that my girlfriend and I would be married as soon as she’d completed her undergraduate studies, heading for the perfect happily-ever-after future we’d both envisioned, at least when we weren’t fighting.
Here’s a spoiler for you — neither of those things ever happened; in fact, what occurred was a Los Alamos-like blast that even J. Robert Oppenheimer would have disowned, saying something like, “She has become death, the destroyer of worlds. Duck and cover!”
This caused a chain-reaction series of nasty events that forced me to adopt a whole new game plan, something serious, a “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” re-evaluation of which fork in the road I’d take, knowing one was closed off forever, icy and lost.
So I took a part-time job covering sports for my hometown newspaper. It didn’t pay a lot, but I didn’t need a lot, always hewing to the “God looks out for those most in need” logic I’d learned in Catholic grade school, a place where I also came to understand that, well, sometimes things don’t always work out.
And then I started playing fastpitch softball, which led to a chance to join a couple of teammates in a weekly bowling league in the fall and winter where my average blossomed from the 130s into the 180s, giving me a very nice niche in which to cradle my competitive urges because, well, I’d always loved winning.
I can see you shaking your head at that shameless admission.
How does that hoary aphorism go?
Oh, yeah.
It doesn’t matter if you win or lose — it’s how you play the game.
Hmm.
Let me put this as succinctly as I can — losing is no fun at all.
If they’re keeping score, the object is to win … hard stop.
That reminds me of the one and only time I dipped my competitive juices into the cauldron of Southern hospitality, one that’s barely an inch deep and a country mile wide. For the 23 years I spent in Coastal Carolina, I joined just a single, solitary athletic diversion.
That was pickleball.
It wasn’t my idea. I was perfectly content winning at fantasy baseball and football, racking up as many trophies as I could, taking pride in my ever-growing collection of championships. But my wife, sensing that something was missing, pointed me in the direction of a new and growing sport that had taken root in our gated community, a place that favored golfing and fishing, neither of which I could afford, let alone given a godforsaken hoot about.
So I showed up at the appointed time at the proscribed location, keeping a positive outlook, waiting for the moment when the enterprise turned from orientation and instruction and camaraderie into something more acutely cutthroat, but that never happened.
For five long pointless weeks, I dutifully did my best, working toward a goal — a place on the travel team, earning me that coveted green jersey — that never existed. It was just a social, convivial get-together, arbitrary and utterly without any true sporting value.
We might as well have been swapping recipes for broiled scallops.
I’d have won that too, though I won’t share my secret ingredient.
Which brings us back to the kitchen and the three bowling balls on the floor. It’s been since the year 2000 that I’ve been involved in the game, but now, having been home since January, I’m tempted to find an outlet, no matter how unrealistic, to compete once again.
Problem is both my balls are of the 16-pound variety, and well, when I’m getting ready for my release, they seem to be throwing me, rather than the inverse, meaning I’m living a lot in the gutter.
I was explaining this the other day, and one of the guys — a big man, burly, strong — excused himself and returned to the table with a shiny red 13-pounder and offered it to me gratis, free of charge.
“Hooks too much for me,” he said. “Probably work for you.”
What was I supposed to say? “No thanks, I’ll continue to suck?”
Obviously, the finger holes are too wide and my thumb swims in the most vital orifice, but it’s possible that if I practice long enough, I might be ready to, um, spare myself the indignity of bowling bad.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or at 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to find him on Facebook, where friends help each other to roll the perfect ball.