This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, November, 2016
If you’re a member of a television family, Thanksgiving means putting a fake turkey on the table and telling your fake extended family everything for which you’re fake thankful. If you’re a member of a real family, you don’t have to do any of that stuff and simply hope the football game is visible from your chair. If you’re a member of a bowling family, it’s kind of like being in a real family, except you don’t care about the football game, instead devoting all your attention to Uncle Bastion’s detailed account of his crucial thumb-tape adjustment leading to a 250 game in league the night before.
What, then, are bowlers thankful for? Is it the ability to end a sentence with a preposition when not doing so would sound incorrect despite being correct? Probably not. Let’s reflect.
Yes, bowlers are thankful for turkeys, even if we now prefer “three-bagger,” as the emerging elitist vernacular implies anyone who says “turkey” is a turkey. A similar movement is happening among Thanksgiving enthusiasts, discussing the best ways to roast, grill and carve three-baggers.
Competitive bowlers are thankful for prize funds, partly because of the money available but mostly because of the joy achieved in pointing out how the money is either too top-heavy or too spread out. If there is one guarantee* in life, it is that there will never be an acceptable prize fund in any bowling tournament at any level. Ever.
Professional bowlers are thankful for the respect and reverence heaped upon them by amateur bowlers. Whereas professional baseball players are berated by amateurs who average .530 in rec-league softball and are one glove sponsorship away from the big leagues, professional bowlers are roundly applauded for their far-superior skills and abilities.
Foreign players are thankful for Bowlers Journal International, where they can be named to the All-American team on an annual basis. Likewise, after winning two PBA Tour titles in Detroit at the Fall Swing and two gold medals for the United States at PABCON in Colombia, American Sean Rash is the frontrunner to be named next year’s captain of the BJI All-Norwegian team.
College bowlers are thankful for rotator cuffs. Obviously, these groups of muscles and tendons are crucial to bowlers of all levels, but they’re especially imperative to the collegiate game, where incessant high-fiving is almost as vital as the phrase, “Come on, pick me up.”
Parents of college-bound children are thankful for youth bowling. Those who took their kids bowling every weekend are celebrating a windfall of scholarship money while parents who absent-mindedly encouraged their kids to waste their time studying are learning the fine art of cleaning out attics and creating unique eBay usernames. Will someone please purchase shouldabowled14’s Micro Machines collection or imaturkey111’s VCR? Their kids need books.
We’re all thankful for superstitions, placebos and other inconsequential factors that give us the confidence necessary to be our best at whatever level we compete. Without that lucky parking spot or familiar sandwich, the pursuit of athletic success is futile.
Ink salesmen are thankful for preposterously cluttered tournament-entry forms, airlines are thankful for overweight baggage fees, mechanics are thankful for overloaded axles and HVAC professionals are thankful the lane man takes all the blame for any subtle change in the interior environment.
Who’s left? Youth bowlers? Youth bowlers are thankful for bowling. They like it. Let’s not get in the way of that. Now pass the potatoes into my non-bowling hand, please.
*Based on infinite entries.