Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-11-29 - 7:35 a.m.

This is my 100th Diaryland entry. If you'd asked me before I started if I could write 100 essays, I would have laughed. Now? Ha! Piece of cake. Thanks for reading :-).

This also turns out to be the last Bowling commentary, because my kid got sick and I missed the last time and BF says we're NOT bowling again. So the Great Sport of Bowling has lost a potential master.

The Last of Geek Bowling

I am not so very sure what to write about this week, because last week I wrote about how not to fall down, and last night I fell down. So I am thinking I should write about how not to bowl 200, and maybe next week I will bowl 200. But I am not sure I know how to write about bowling 200, and anyway my knee hurts.

I have been watching the people that bowl good, though. I know a few things about them now. I know one thing - even though they bowl good, they aren't very smart. They have not noticed that the different color balls are different weights, and they always pick up the heavy ones. HA! I noticed this right away, and I always get the red balls. I picked up one that was a different color once and I noticed the difference straight off. I didn't tell anyone, though. This is a competetive sport and if those people find out about the red balls, they will win every time.

I know another thing, too. The people that bowl good have like really cool ballet finishes. They've got this curtsey thing going on for the lower half, and a kind of a third-position thing for the upper half, and you end up admiring them and it really distracts you from seeing exactly what their ball does so you can't get their bowling secrets. I considered that perhaps these ballet poses had some influence on the ball as it went down the lane, so I tried hopping right into an arabesque once after I rolled the ball, but it didn't seem to notice and rolled right into the gutter anyway. So now I think it's just good if I don't fall down, and I am giving you all my bowling secrets for free so I don't have to distract you by break-dancing in the lane, which is how I fell down anyway.

I have noticed that there are two types of good bowlers, too. One kind is the Power Bowler. These people are scary. If I were the kid that hands out the shoes, I would not go down in the lanes to get a pin out of the gutter until I had made all the Power Bowlers put their hands over their heads. "Okay! I'm going in! Hands UP!" These guys don't get strikes, they get detonations. KaPOW!! Pins blowing up everywhere. These guys can get strikes for themselves and the bowler in the next LANE.

Then there are the Polite Bowlers. They take smaller steps and they just r o l l the ball gently. Then they stand there. You can go get your bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich and stop for napkins too, and when you come back the ball will just be arriving at the end of the lane and saying, "Excuse me, please" and it will hit one or two pins, which will twirl around gently and knock into their neighbors in a kind of slow domino ballet thing, and five minutes later you have finished your sandwich and the last pin is just going over. I have tried this method but I think I was too polite because my ball stayed out of the way and did not disturb any pins at all.

So you can see I do not yet have the key to bowling 200, and there is only one more week of Geek Bowling left, and I also think I will not have time to unlock the Mystery of Whose Turn It Is To Bowl, which disappoints me. First everybody bowls once, and then it's your turn again in the left lane, and suddenly it's your turn in the RIGHT lane too, so you run over there, but the Left Lane You has not gotten her ball back yet, and everybody else gets to drink beer while you're bowling frantically in all the lanes and that is a lot of pressure for a beginner, you know. Then it will not be your turn again for a long long time unless you go out to smoke, in which case it will immediately be your turn again in both lanes. So I don't get this, and I need to do a lot more experimenting and observing, but there is only one more week to go and perhaps some Mysteries of Bowling will just have to wait.

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