In theory, I like bowling a lot. It’s one of the world’s great social games. Here’s why: depending on the number of players, anywhere between 50% and 85% of the game is spent waiting for your turn. (If you count as waiting the time from when you release your ball to when your ball (hopefully) hits the pins, it’s even more.) What do you do while you’re waiting? Doodle on the scorecard, drink beer, put songs on the jukebox – but mostly, talk to the other players (or taunt your opponents). For a lot of people, bowling’s just an excuse to hang out – not so different from going to watch a game at the ballpark. Whatever you think of the merits (or boredom-inducingness) of bowling or baseball, the social aura of these sports is arguably as important as the sports themselves.
In practice, I hate bowling. This is because I’m a very bad bowler. Although I’ve become less sensitive about seeing, say, five straight balls make abrupt left turns into the gutter, it’s still not that fun to play a game when your score is 50 points below everyone else’s. My approach to avoiding the humiliations of bowling while participating in the fun parts is designating myself scorekeeper. (Although the rise of automated scorekeeping is gradually robbing me of this tactic.)
At least I can now console myself with the fact that our newly inaugurated President is also a terrible bowler.
Question of the day: are there any other famous bad bowlers?
