Last night started out like any other Monday night. I showed up for my bowling league and my first game was a disaster. I couldn't figure out how to overcome all the oil on the lanes and I ended up shooting a 128. Not good. My average is just 175, so I don't have hopes of shooting huge scores, but a 128 won't cut it. The second game started off well. I had four strikes in a row. After the fifth strike, I returned to my table and told my teammates that I wasn't feeling any pressure to keep the string of strikes going because I'm not good enough to bowl a perfect game. Then I threw four more strikes and I headed into the tenth frame with a perfect game intact. I really didn't smash the pocket throughout the game, so I still figured that I didn't have much of a shot at a 300. My first two shots in the tenth frame were light, but somehow they carried and I was just one strike away from a perfect game.
I may not be good enough to throw a 300, but at that point I was thinking that I might be lucky enough to get one more strike to complete a 300. And that's when I got nervous. I didn't linger on the approach though. What was the point? I might as well follow my normal routine--or that's how my thinking went. I let the ball go and it felt good. But it didn't make it back to the pocket in time and I ended up with a seven-count and a 297 game. Quite a few people clapped and one or two people gave me a high-five, which was cool.
You might think that I had it all figured out going into the third game, but the shot changed on me. The oil broke down and all of a sudden my ball was hooking right through the nose. I ended up with a 165 for my last game and a 590 series. I didn't even shoot a 600 series after nearly throwing a perfect game. Nothing like a good taste of humility so quickly after near perfection.
The only thing I was really bummed about was not shooting 600. But I raised my average a couple of pins and that's a good thing. I downed a beer that a teammate bought me as a way to celebrate my 297. And it felt good just to be hanging out with friends on a Monday night. It's hard to beat that no matter what you shoot.
