Bowling.

I can remember being in a bowling *league* back when I was growing up and bowling was one of the preeminent social activities of the day.  I would spend every spare (no pun intended) moment in the bowling alleys of Laurel Maryland, Princeton West Virginia and Pemberton New Jersey.  The alley in Laurel was where I learned ten-pin bowling and the far more obscure *duckpins*, the little squat pins which were hard as heck to knock down, when you did the sound lacked the rattling finality of ten-pins.  Duckpins reluctantly go down with a whimper.

My high school actually had a gym class devoted to bowling where we were taught the proper way to grip the ball, release the ball, how to throw a ‘hook’ into the ‘pocket’, etc.  I love the arcane language of bowling, a sport whose rules are only slightly less obscure than *cricket*, a game which consists of men running around a field and doing random things described as “full toss”, “googly” and “leg before wicket”, all of which sound vaguely sexual.  Don’t get me started on cricket.

Bowling has been around in one form or another for millennia but the type I am describing took off with the advent of the automatic pin setting machines invented by Brunswick.  Prior to that the pins were cleared and set by nimble young men called “pinsetters”.  Even then automation was changing the landscape, asking armies of pinspotters to seek gainful employment elsewhere, perhaps chasing down errant shots at a golf driving range.  Speaking of mysterious language, golf, who knew?

I remember being on a bowling team somewhere,  and since I was a novice bowler with a high handicap I would occasionally be asked to score poorly.  This team request was done quietly as if we all understood the secret mathematics of victory.  Once, it all came down to me NOT making a spare in the 10th frame (ed note: more arcane bowling lingo).  Faced with the need to miss the pins I hit them quite by accident, in any normal time a mark of success.  However judging from the sea of scowls my team was not happy with me that day.  I found it all very strange and disturbing, this need to manipulate the handicap system in order to “win”.

I should have just spun up a googly.