Striking Happenings in the Bowling Alley

My infatuation with bowling began when I was very young. Or so I'm told.

Whenever I talk to my grandmother, she loves to recall my encounters with bowling--and especially bowling balls--when I was a child.

My grandfather was a bowler, owned his own ball and belonged to a league. Oddly, I remember his ball well. It was black with yellow speckles and looked like a large egg. Perhaps that's what attracted me to the ball--the possibility that it might give birth, at any moment, to a huge bird.

My grandmother likes to remind me of the time she, my grandfather and I went to dinner after one of his bowling matches. We walked into the restaurant, sat down, and I began to cry. My grandfather asked me what was wrong, and through a curtain of tears, I muttered, "We left the bowling ball in the car."

"Well, of course we did," he said. "It'll be fine out there." I demanded that he get the ball and bring it inside. He refused, laughing. When my tears did not stop, he caved in, went out to the car and brought back the ball. People in the restaurant looked at him strangely as he walked to our table with a bowling ball in his arms. But they were probably grateful--I stopped crying.

Bowling was part of my adolescence, although not a big part. My friends and I grew up dreaming of becoming professional football players, not bowlers.

Despite our love for football, we always went bowling at birthday parties. We became very competitive during the games, and each roll of the ball seemed to carry with it an enormous burden, as the entire birthday crowd gathered to watch. A strike was a rare thing and was greeted with applause. A gutter ball was a more frequent thing and was laughed at.

My friend Andy, who had five or six birthday parties at bowling alleys, established the record for bowling when he rolled a birthday-record, 12--straight gutter balls. I think he did this the same year he got 16 model airplanes and a pair of socks for his birthday.

Before my parents were divorced, my family used to go bowling four times a year or so. My sister, like Andy, had a knack for rolling gutter balls. She usually rolled a few frames and then went off to sip Cokes and play video games.

My mother, too, was a poor bowler and frequently sent the ball skidding toward the sides of the alley. Once, she flung the ball so hard into the gutter that it sprung out and knocked down a few pins. Amazed, she yelled, "Fantastic!"

"Luck," my father countered.

My mother didn't care much about the game. She came to the alley to have fun, she said. My father, on the other hand, was deadly serious about bowling. Before he went to bowl, he stared at the pins for a minute, took a few measured steps and hurled the ball toward the end of the alley. He cursed a poor frame and congratulated himself on a good one.

My father didn't like the fact that my mother didn't take bowling seriously. "If you don't play to win," he said, "why play at all" In bowling, as in life, my father played to win and my mother played to have a good time.

This summer, I went to Florida with my friend and her retarded sister, Carol. One night we went to a bowling alley. We were sun-burned and tired, but Carol was peppy and eager, and she went first and rolled the ball, under-handed, into the gutter. She turned around and smiled.

We rolled a couple frames, and we cheered for each other; and it didn't seem to matter what scores we got. Carol kept yelling and laughing and telling us what wonderful bowlers we were, and we began to believe her. We concentrated harder. We rolled the ball harder. And each time, Carol screamed. And we screamed for her.

Soon, Carol decided to bless us. She would give us luck by rubbing her hand over ours. She rubbed her hand on mine, and I stepped to the line and rolled. Strike. The next frame, she did it again. I rolled. Strike. And on the next frame, too, the same result. Strike. When I came back after my third strike, she smiled broadly, and nodded as if she had known all along I was going to make three straight strikes.

The fourth time, I received her blessing--her luck--and again I stepped to the line. I rolled. The ball tumbled down the center of the lane, broke a little to the left and smashed against the pins. The pins toppled over--save one. It wobbled but stayed standing. I turned to Carol. "That's all right," she said.

She was smiling, and in her smile--as in her touch--there was a blessing. It was, after all, all right.