Well that was crap! First half of both bowling rounds were trash

I recently wrote about how I finally feel as though I am getting a good grasp on my bowling strategy and how when I go stand at the lanes I do so with confidence and roll really well. I am about a 140 average bowler, which if anyone out there is truly "league-serious" about the sport knows, this is not a score to flaunt because it isn't very good.

But for our group it is one of the top 4 or maybe even top 3.

This past Tuesday at practice bowling I bowled around a 160 average with a game high of I think it was 189. had just a little bit of difference happened in 2 frames that game would have been over 200 which doesn't happen often in our league.

Well, @bozz called it about how me thinking I had it all figured out was going to come and bite me in the ass and man oh man did it ever.

This, my friends, is the infamous "stupid 5-pin" and it is a bane to all on the lanes. I don't understand the physics behind it, but for some reason it is the single pin that is MOST likely to still be standing after you get a good roll in the 1/2 or 1/3 "pocket." It isn't just me, it is everyone and because of some sort of law of physics even though you slam the crap out of the balls and the roll seems really good, that lone bastard is very often left staring you down and preventing you from having strikes.

We have a thing that we do when someone ends up with a single 5 and we used to shout "stupid 5 pin!" but it was happening so frequently that we transitioned to just holding up your hand with a "high 5" sort of thing and this happens dozens of times every game.

With me, it happened 4 out of the 5 first frames of my first game. In the other frame, I ended up with a single 10 pin, which for a right-to-left bowler like me, is even worse.

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The 10 pin is the one furthest to the right and for someone like me that bowls with a curve that they cannot turn off, this is the most difficult pin to get down when it is on its own. While most people would just try to hug the gutter and roll it straight down, I am forced to cross a lot of perhaps all of the lane and let my curve slowly straighten the shot out getting the ball just to the gutter, but not with too much of an angle that it goes into the gutter. While I can accomplish this on a good day more than 50% of the time, yesterday I managed it 0% of the time in the first game.

After 5 frames I had zero strikes, and zero spares. I had hit the first roll rather perfectly, or at least as perfectly as I am capable of, and I had nothing but 9's. We call this German bowling for silly reasons that some of you out there might be able to guess.

But then something magical happened from frames 7-10 and I started bowling like someone that actually knows how to bowl. The training from Tuesday must have kicked in because I striked or spared every frame after that and ended the game with a 128. This is not a good score but only 12 pins below my average. The way things were going in frames 1-6 it looked like I wasn't going to break 100 and we refer to this as a "girl score' which isn't nice but in our league is true.

Since I finished frame 10 with a strike and a spare I figured that game two was going to be great because it's not like we take a break or change lanes. What do you think the reality actually was?

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Once again, i completely forgot how to bowl and it was almost like I was announcing this to the cosmos when on my first ball in game two was a "doink" or I managed to just knock over a single pin. I failed to clean the rest of them up on the 2nd ball too for a frame total of? you guessed it, 9 points.

This would carry on once again, for all frames 1-5 and I had already resigned myself to a horrible score but then, once again, like magic and clockwork combined, in frames 7-10 I was all of a sudden an expert again. I got 2 strikes in row in frames 7 and 8, then barely missed the turkey in frame 9 but cleaned up the spare, then a Strike and spared in 10 to end with a 149, 9 points above my average.

So my average went down about a fraction of a point in this series, but it certainly looked like the damage was going to be much greater than that.

In the end I actually finished with the highest score of anyone in the premiere league that wasn't already bowling for the title.

Here's the thing: Someone said to "not take it too seriously because that will take all the fun out of it" and I honestly do not take it seriously. Would I prefer to do better? Absolutely. But if I bowl badly I don't let it ruin our day.

There is a guy in our group that is ironically named "Magic" and he takes the game very seriously. If he does poorly, which is often the case, he becomes impossible to be around and acts like a baby that wants to take his ball and go home crying. He negatively affects everyone around him when he is like his and we all just ignore him these days. He is a big baby when he doesn't do well and this is a pretty awful way to be when you are in your mid-60's.

I have fun even when I am sucking at it but often it doesn't make any sense to me that I am just god awful in the first half of both games but then play like a pro in the second half. I joke and say that I was doing it on purpose so that the others on my lane wont feel bad but that is a lie. I am always trying as hard as I can but sometimes apparently, the arms and body just don't want to cooperate.

Next week I bowl for the title against a guy that has an average of about 15 points better than I do per game. Will I practice extra in preparation for this event? Absolutely not.