Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.
As some of you know, in a previous life (it seems anyway) I was a professional bowler. For 3 years I bowled in PBA events and had a great time doing it. Truth be told, my PBA career was probably not profitable but I bet I came close to breaking even. Over the years I also bowled in many leagues in Kokomo, IN. And, in about 2 years, I will be eligible for nomination into the Kokomo Bowling Hall of Fame. If I am remembering right, I will become eligible once I have reached the 20 year anniversary of my first year of adult league bowling. For me, that was the 1988-89 season.
Now, I am assuming a lot in saying I am eligible. First, someone has to nominate me. Given that I quit league bowling a few years ago and given that I moved away from Kokomo, I doubt anyone will remember me let alone remember that I was a good bowler. This little fact has not stopped me from writing my acceptance speech for when I do get accepted in the the Kokomo Bowling Hall of Fame. I actually attended one Hall of Fame banquet and so I know that not much is expected in the way of speeches so mine should be one to remember (I hope). Over the years (like 10 or so years ago when I was young and cocky) I imagined that I would not even need to have a speech. My bowling career would simply speak for itself. Well, that did not happen so here is what I decided to focus on: My Greatest Bowling Shot.
Now this shot did not occur during a PBA event, at a tournament, in a bowling league or even at a bowling center. No, my greatest bowling shot occurred at my best friend's house in his living room. While in out teens and in the youth leagues, he and I would spend the night at each other's house every Friday night (alternating weekly). The youth leagues were on Saturday mornings and since we were both really into bowling we spent a lot of time doing 2 things: playing Atari Bowling and rolling a slightly underinflated soccer ball at half filled shampoo bottles. We once had a contest where we bowled 100 games each on Atari Bowling in one night. Try as we might, we never shot a 300 on the blasted game! I am not sure how we came up with the soccer ball / shampoo bottle game but usually we took 4 bottles, set them up in a diamond pattern and took turns throwing the soccer ball at them. After a while this got a little boring so we would set up trick shots for each other. The only rule was that the shampoo bottles had to be visible and that the person setting up the pins could sit on his knees behind the "pins" and stop the ball from rebounding back toward the pins and knocking more of them down.
So, let me set up the shot for you. Basically my friend took 3 of the shampoo bottles and stuck them up against the couch on the left side of the room and then 8 or so foot to the right he set up the other bottle. This shot was impossible really. For those of you having difficulty, I have created this high tech drawing to recreate the scene...
So basically I was located at Xi and my friend was at Xii (ready to stop the ball from rebounding back into the "lane". The shampoo bottles are the red circles and the larger black circle is actually an 8 pound (normal) bowling ball that happened to be behind the (broken) TV set. This is not exactly drawn to scale and during my Hall of Fame acceptance speech there will be a better slide show (and maybe some animation). Ok, so my plan of attack at converting this very difficult split was to throw the ball very hard at the 3 shampoo bottles on my left and hope I got lucky and something knocked the other one over.
It all happened so fast and the years have embellished the story in my own mind but here is basically what happened (and my friend can attest to this). I did indeed aim, hit and knock down the 3 pins on the left. After that the ball hit my friend's knee and then angled over toward the last pin. It just missed it actually but the ball landed between the wall and the real bowling ball (behind the [broken] TV set). The ball was travelling at a high rate of speed and actually was ricocheting back and forth between the wall and the bowling ball. It had to have landed between the wall and the other ball just perfectly. Every time it would bounce and hit the (real) bowling ball, it would inch it ever closer to the last pin. This all happened so fast but it seemed that the soccer ball bounced back and forth at an extremely high rate of speed for a few seconds. Contrast that with the extremely minute movement of the (real) bowling ball and the even slower (but increasing) angle that the last pin was leaning over and you basically have the scene. We just stood there watching this pin getting closer and closer to its fulcrum point. At any time my friend (according to rules) could jump in and stop the ball from moving but he was mesmerized at what was happening before him. After what seemed like a few minutes, the pin finally fell over (and so did we). We were rolling on the floor laughing for what seemed like 15 minutes. It was truly incredible!
So anyway, that is the subject of my Hall of Fame speech. I will probably never get to make that speech but I know I will never have a greater experience in bowling that that one shot in my friend's living room.
Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.
Jon
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