Tenn Pins

Posted by John

Do you know what I hate? Bowling. Do you know why I hate it? Because I suck turds at it. I’ve truly only bowled a few dozen times in my life and I’ve sucked every single time. I know they say practice makes perfect but at this point in my life I’m not really into picking up a new skill that requires me to practice in order to be good at it. In fact, I’m actively trying to cut things out of my life so as to have more time for doing jack shit other than sleeping and/or napping.

Outside of a complete lack of practice, the other reason I suck at bowling is because I have abnormally large thumbs. Like, my thumbs are so huge that if I’m walking down the street and I’m not careful about keeping my hands tucked into my pockets cars will routinely stop thinking I’m hitchhiking. I’m sure this conversation has occurred on more than one occasion inside a car that is driving past me:

“Hey, honey, look at that hitchhiker. We should pick him up.”

“I don’t think he’s hitchhiking, dear. I think he’s just walking down the side of the road.”

“No, no. Look at those thumbs. He’s definitely a hitchhiker.”

“I really don’t think he’s a hitchhiker, dear. And even if he is, we really shouldn’t pick up hitchhikers. You don’t know if he’s some sort of crazy Tea Partier walking home from a protest rally or something.”

“Yeah, honey, but look at those thumbs. For Christ’s sake, we should pick him up if for no other reason than to find some useful purposes for those abnormally large thumbs of his.”

When it comes to bowling, having an abnormally large thumb means I need to select an abnormally heavy ball in order to get my thumb in the stupid hole. By the way, who in the hell decided on what standard size holes to drill into bowling balls? Did they measure a bunch of fingers and thumbs then see how much weight each of those fingers and thumbs could safely roll down a long wooden lane and come to a consensus on an average size hand-to-lifting-capacity ratio? Was it that simple because whoever did those thumb-to-weight ratios was a jackass. I have never in my life found a bowling ball that I can simultaneously fit my thumb into the hole and lift without appearing to be competing and losing n some sort of strong man competition. Do you know what it’s like going to a bowling alley among women, children, and rednecks looking like you’re about to burst a hemorrhoid every time you try to roll a massive boulder down the alley?

The same shit happens every time I bowl. After three frames of tearing through my rotator cuff I have to suck it up and go to a smaller ball. But a smaller ball means a smaller hole so it’s the same shit every goddamn time – I set up, take three steps, swing my arm back, swing my arm forward, release the ball, the ball stays attached to my thumb until my hand is about eye level, the ball suddenly dislodges from my thumb with a loud *POP* sound, it arcs through the air, peaking at about six feet above the floor, then comes slamming down onto the wooden lane with a thunderous *BOOM*, and the entire goddamn bowling alley suddenly turns see what all the commotion is. It’s one thing if that happens and everyone turns to see me get a strike. It’s an entirely other thing for the entire goddamn place to see my ball go directly into the goddamn gutter. Stupid goddamn leisure sport.

And that’s the other thing – who in the hell started calling bowling a “leisure sport.” There’s nothing leisurely about it. That shit stresses me out. I’d rather go to a women’s underwear store in the mall than go to a bowling alley, that’s how much that shit stresses me out.

One form of bowling that I don’t suck at is Wii bowling, but it’s too bad Wii bowling skills don’t translate to actual bowling skills. In fact, it’s too bad Wii skills in general don’t translate to any reality skills. If they did we’d probably see a lot more gaming nerds picking bar fights with meat-head Guido douchebags thinking their Wii boxing skills will help them out. “Nice blowout douchebag. What? What’re you looking at? You want to do this dance? You want to step into the ring with a Wii boxing champ? I didn’t think so. Go get another jager bomb, douchebag!”

Instead of Nintendo Wii they should call it Nintendo False Sense of Self-Confidence, because that’s really all it is. There isn’t a single skill in the Wii Sports realm that translates to real life. I can’t hit a tennis ball; I haven’t picked up a bow and arrow since I was 13; I’ve never once played shuffleboard; but you better believe I’m a goddamn Wii Pro at all of those things. Good thing they don’t have Wii engineering. I’d practice that shit at home and get really good and confident only to go into work and find out that shit doesn’t translate to real life either. As it is now I have no false sense of self-confidence so there’s no letdown when I royally screw something up. It’s just like bowling – “Well, that pretty much went exactly as expected. Next time you’ll think twice about inviting me to go bowling.”

Obviously I bring all this up because I just recently went bowling. Why on earth would I engage in something I am so horrible at, you’re asking? Obviously I got suckered into it. In this case, it was for a fundraiser.

But do you know what I hate worse than bowling? Bowling with children. Why, you might ask? Because children suck turds at everything.

Perhaps it’s not a fair statement to say that children categorically suck at everything because I’m sure there are some things that they’re good at. Playing with cars; soiling themselves; being blissfully unaware of leftover food all over their faces. That’s about all I can think of right now. Outside of those things and maybe a few others children pretty much suck at everything.

Case in point: several people brought their kids to this bowling fundraiser, ranging in age from 2 to I have no idea. I suck at estimating ages.

“And how old are you big girl? You must be at least six-years-old.”

“I’m 14 asshole, now back off before I scream.”

Anyway, there were some young kids there who were all ape shit crazy about bowling even though every single one of them sucked turds at it. If you think about it, there’s really no excuse for a kid to suck at bowling. They have small hands and can therefore pick the smallest, lightest ball in the entire place; we allow them to break the rules by putting the bumpers up in the gutters; and in general they have a bunch of people cheering them on and encouraging them even though they are terrible at it. That’s like the bowling equivalent of growing up as a white middleclass male.

But it doesn’t matter, they all suck. Plus, have you ever seen a kid bowl who doesn’t use one of those sloped ramps to get the ball started? Have you ever seen a kid actually try to roll a ball down the lane? Holy shit, it’s worse than watching paint dry on grass that is growing or something. It takes FOREVER.

At one point a 4-year-old “rolled” the ball down the lane but it was traveling so painfully slow that I had time to go get a beer from the bar and still return to see the ball hit a pin and have the pin actually deflect the ball into the gutter without falling over. Is that even physically possible? How slow does a goddamn bowling ball have to be traveling in order to be turned away by a pin?

After all of that – the stressful bowling alley; the inordinately heavy balls; the ball sticking to the thumb; the kids; the kids sucking at everything including bowling; after all of that, do you know what the worst part of the whole experience was? I actually lost to one of those goddamn kids. No shit. He was two; he can’t talk; he routinely tried to kick the ball down the lane; in between frames he would play with cars on the dirty-ass bowling alley floor; he tried to stick his head into the ball return; over the course of two hours he shit himself twice; and the sonofabitch still beat me. How the hell does that happen? How in the hell does that happen?

The only saving grace I had the entire day was walking out of he stupid alley thinking to myself that would be the absolute last time I ever go bowling. Ever.

Until I was at work today and got an e-mail from the head of the mentoring group I participate in where we teach high school kids about architecture and engineering telling me about the end of year bowling party with the students coming up this Thursday.

Fuck. Off.

What could possibly be worse than losing to a 2-year-old at bowling? How about going bowling with a bunch of high school teenagers? I have spent every day of the last 13 years of my life trying to forget every horribly awkward moment that was high school and now all of the sudden I have to walk back into the lion’s den of awkwardness and actually go bowling with a bunch of high school teenagers? Dear God, I’m positively tremulous right now. The only way I can possibly survive this is to immediately go purchase a custom bowling ball with a 2-inch diameter thumb hole that weighs 4 pounds. What other recourse do I have? I’ll tell you what other recourse - none.