You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Cousin Bowling Night.
20 of us enter the bowling alley in Seaside, California.
Like every alley I’ve ever been in, it reeks of foot spray and microwavable pizza.
I see a glass display with designer bowling balls. I see mirrors that make the neon seem to stretch forever. I see a game room and bar off the main room.
I see one of those glass boxes with prizes inside. A child is maneuvering the metallic claw over a stuffed animal. He thinks he has a winner. Just as a pink bunny is about to release over the slot, the claw surprisingly loses its grip. Stuffed bunnies are elusive that way.
As I move forward to the main desk, the sounds of pins crashing and balls smashing the floor immediately quicken the pulse.
Our group is formidable. We are ready to drink and make merry and even bowl.
The oldest cousin just turned 60. He is an old bowling pirate with a peg leg, scruffy beard and parrot. In this group, the old bowling pirate is cut throat. He swings from lane to lane with a saber in his mouth howling “Shiver me eight ten splits”
The youngest cousin is five years old. He has fire red hair like cayenne pepper. He has snot running down his nose and he licks it with his tongue. As best I can tell, he has never picked up a ball in his life.
Suddenly, we are the center of the bowling universe. We are lanes 14,15,16,17. We are 4 lanes directly in front of the check in desk.
I end up with my kids and the old bowling pirate.
Beside us, the littlest members of the family. Ages 5-9. Fire hair and three fairy princesses are tossing balls all at once.
They are so excited, grabbing multiple balls, loading them in the ball return. It’s bowling anarchy as they fire one ball after another down the lane.
etiquette?
Not on lane 16.
Next to the kids are an assortment of other family members just as excited to start hucking balls.
We are more than 20 people spread across four lanes. It’s not New York City subway car tight, but it’s busy. Good thing we all share the same DNA.
I see sisters throwing gutter balls. I see brother in laws smashing pins.
I see high fives and beers being spilled. I watch as one of the fairy princesses struggles to lift the ball and then toss it down the lane.
The ball is barely moving, perhaps rolling at 3 mph.
The ball wants to go to the gutter and die. But the kids have bumper guards which make every shot a winner.
I watch as this 3 mph spheroid methodically rolls down the lane, bouncing slowly off the rubber barrier like a slow motion pin ball machine.
The ball barely gets to the lead pin. It knocks it over. Suddenly fire hair is cheering wildly scoring an 8.
He is so excited. It’s as if the tooth fairy just tucked a C note under his pillow.
“You’re up dad,” My daughter shouts.
I look at the over head screen and see that I am all ready trailing my 5 year old nephew on the other lane.
Where are my bumper guards, I think to myself.
I take my position on the floor and stare at the pins.
I haven’t bowled in a while. I am not sure if I should use the pins as my target or the dots on the lane.
I wind up and let it rip. The ball almost tears my thumb off as the ball heads down the lane like an old man with one leg shorter than the other.
3 pins.
Damn.
I look to the kids who are all jumping up and down watching the latest 3 mph effort.
Bang. Clang. Boing.
The ball is richoetting off the bumpers.
The ball is moving so slowly.
I wonder if it will stop in the middle of the lane.
The kids are squealing, all four of them standing on the stripe, waiting, hoping, exhilarated.
I take the moment to look at the score of other family members.
Nobody better quit their day job.
I turn back to the kid’s lane as the ball kisses the pins at half a mile an hour.
It is a rolling snail, with just enough energy to topple the lead pin. Suddenly the next pin topples, then the next and the one behind it.
It is a slow motion house of cards crumbling in upon itself.
It takes 2, perhaps 3 seconds and the lane is littered with 7 pins and the ball stuck in the middle of this bowling disaster.
The machine grabs the remaining three pins, picks them up, and then wipes the lane clean.
The kids jump and down screaming as if they have discovered the missing link.
I laugh silently, and then look at my lane.
7 pins standing before me.
I decide to use the marks on the lane.
I aim just off the center and let the ball roll off my fingers.
This time it’s smooth as my fingers easily leave the holes and the ball effortlessly glides down the buttered lane.
Smash.
All the pins go down.
Spare!
I’m excited.
I look up and my kids are cheering for me.
It’s a nice feeling.
Most of us are struggling to bowl over 100.
My oldest cousin, the pirate, he is a very good bowler.
He has been bowling most of his life, having spent 20 years bowling in a competitive league.
We all rented shoes and picked a random ball.
The bowling pirate?
He brought his own shoes. One for his foot. One for his peg.
Aye Matey.
The bowling pirate? I believe he has a ball with his initials on it.
He stares at the pins and squints.
He is Dirty Harry with a bowling ball.
“Go ahead Pins. Make my day,” he seems to say as he starts his sequence.
I will watch him take this trip down the lane 60 times in the next two hours.
It is always the same.
One, two, three steps. He has a smooth delivery to the line. The ball is back, poised, and then like a pendulum clock, arm extended, ball rips through the throwing zone.
And then the release.
He slides his right leg behind his left and holds a pose as the ball jettisons down the lane.
The ball comes off his wrist with a wicked torque, dancing like a dizzy ballerina on the edge of the gutter.
The ball is spinning like a small asteroid creating its own gravitational force.
At some point, the ball churns and burns on the buttery lane creating heat. Somewhere, somehow, enough friction is generated, enough molecules violently disrupted, that the ball begins to bend.
I watch as the spinning, rotating spheroid begins to stick to the icy surface.
I watch as the smooth ball, spins on the slick wood, spinning, rotating, fighting to gain a hold. And then the dance of friction and gravity comes together as the ball leans into the lane and seemingly accelerates toward the pins.
It’s like a rolling centrifuge of greased butter, now zeroing in on the lead pin with all the accuracy of a laser guided bomb.
In the last 15 feet, his ball violently torques from right to left and then splatters the pins with the force of a thunder cloud.
My cousin the bowling pirate doesn’t wait for the final result.
He turns to face us and watches our faces as he returns to his seat.
He is walking his own plank.
In the last 2 seconds, with his back turned to the lane, the pins are blown apart, smashing into each other knocking down the entire row.
X
The scoreboard lights up. STRIKE!
We cheer and he smiles, all ready knowing the result before the ball hits the back wall.
The bowling pirate will go on to bowl like a bad professional, but an exceptional novice.
In our group he is a king among feeble simpletons.
I will bowl a 135 in my 2nd game.
After that?
The bowling alley beers kick in and my game goes to hell as my brain cells pour out the side of skull.
“Little red’s beating you,” the pirate will say looking at the monitors above our lanes.
My fire haired 5 year old ginger nephew is banging the bumpers and flirting with the century mark.
I laugh. I’m getting beaten by a kid who just stopped using a sippy cup.
Bowling gutter guards. The great equalizer. If only life came with bumper guards. Can you imagine?
You could text and drunk drive on highways. Just as you were about to hit another motorist, a bumper guard would pop up around the other car and you would gently bounce along your merry way.
By the time you get to work, you would be sober and eligible for a raise.
That’s a life the bowling pirate could endorse.
While the scores on this lane are low, the happiness is high.
I see a constant barrage of camera flashes popping. It’s as if the paparazzi has followed us into the Seaside bowling lanes and is documenting every moment, every throw, every hug every smile.
And through it all, I see a steady onslaught of beers being carted in from the bar.
I look at this frenetic group and laugh. I feel peace as balls are flying, pins falling and bad pizza being consumed.
Cousin Bowling. It’s the little things in life that make a difference. It’s moments like this that must be remembered.
I tell my kids to take it in, to try to remember a small piece of this, and keep it with them forever.
“Watch the pirate,” I will say.
Once day he will be eaten by sharks and his peg leg stolen by denizens of the deep.
My kids eye ball me suspiciously.
I gaze upon the four lanes of bowling fun. t’s a slow-motion time capsule, a memory, preserved like a dinosaur fossil in Arctic ice.
We called it cousin bowling night, but it really was so much more.
It was a celebration by people bound by DNA that is mutually exclusive to one clan.
And like that, two hours is over and the night ends.
I hand back our bowling shoes and watch as the woman sprays them with industrial strength disinfectant.
We are an ancestral family tree that dates back generations.
I watch the smallest of the clan, the fire haired boy, dance a jig up the stairs. He heads for the big claw machine. He runs past the oldest pirate who is too busy twisting his peg back into position.
We are a rolling bowling strolling pirate ship of family.
Tonight we set sail to a lane with a buttery smooth finish. We launched our spherical fleet and rolled our balls down a lane of slick thunder.
I watched bumper guards create magic and little bowlers giggle themselves into a stupor.
And I marveled at a bowling pirate who tamed gravity, and taught friction to accumulate on the edge of a whisper.
I watched a pirate cousin spin away from the action in an act of defiance, all ready knowing the final tally.
BAM. CRASH. SMASH.
As as he walked back to the bench his ball gyrates and caresses pins and knocks them down in a final exclamation point.
X
Cousin bowling.
Mechanized thunder set to a family beat.
Aye matey.
Life’s Crazy™