So Pete, Julie and I did some bowling last night. I don’t really know why, but I’ve had this urge to go lately, and so we did. None of us would claim to be experienced bowlers. Certainly none of us made enough of a showing to be asked to join a professional curcuit or anything.
So, my mom taught me to bowl, which is why I can’t. Not that my mom isn’t really good at bowling. It’s just that I never listened to anything she tried to teach me growing up. So I vaguely remember her admonitions on form and style, where to stand when starting the approach, and what point to begin pulling the arm behind you and then forward, the importance of follow-through. But lack of practice, caring, and paying attention mean that all of her sage alley advice has been largely lost on me. So I usually score (is that the right word for this game?) under 100.
Julie, claiming not to have bowled in something like 5 years or only 5 times in her life, or something like that, scored over 100 in all of her games last night. But I noticed that her success had very little to do with the careful form that my mother taught me was so essential. No, Julie has a very different style, which is more along the lines of: walk up to the line, drop the ball on the ground, and wait for 9 pins to fall down. Sometimes all 10. But with frightening consistency, 9 would go down. Drop the ball. 9 pins fall. It was really uncanny. In 3 games, the only real variation was that the number of times all 10 went down increased a bit. Drop the ball. 9 pins fall.
Pete, on the other hand, I am thinking after last night’s performance, really should do that competitive lip synching thing. Cheap Trick, Journey–whatever the hell bad mid-80s pop he was writhing on the floor to–it was worthy of American Idol, that performance.
