This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, June, 2017
Bowling is not the only subset of culture with a nomenclature unique to itself, but it’s definitely one of the most unique among the unique. Every geographical region, corporate guidebook and alleged close-knit group of friends has its own way of communicating. The beauty of such a phenomenon is the linguistic intricacies sound normal within those groups, even enhancing the level of engagement and fun within the group. The even-more beauty is how absurd it all looks when you analyze it from the outside.
Homonymous Synonyms
Your ball rolls down the lane, looking good for the first 30 feet or so. Then, not so much. It’s not quite hanging, not quite skating and definitely not out the window, but there’s something weird about it. Your assurance that it’ll cut back to the pocket quickly dissipates as you watch it try to turn but never fully succeed in doing so. After watching all the pins except the 2, 4 and 10 fall, you turn around to see your loving teammate, who says, “Got a little skittish down there.”
You need a moment to process his feedback. Did he say “skittish,” a real word, meaning nervous, that personifies the bowling ball as a frightened hermit too scared to turn to the pocket? Or did he say “skiddish,” a fake word invented by bowlers that means the ball is skidding too much? And, since both homonyms end up meaning the same thing, why does it matter? It matters because you want to know if your teammate is worthy of praise for using an underused vocabulary word (skittish) or if your teammate is worthy of praise for using insider jargon (skiddish). He definitely deserves some kind of recognition.
Too frustrated with the 2-4-10 to figure it out and definitely too skittish to compliment your teammate, you let it go.
Sk8 Or Die
“That ball is too skid flippy.”
Staying with the skidding theme, we consider the problem that has plagued bowlers for as long as it has helped skateboarders win gold medals at the X Games: skid flips.
Of course, skid flippiness can be a good thing, although we almost always hear it in the context of a ball being too skid flippy or a player desperately needing—but failing to achieve—skid flippiness.
Skid flippiness, invented by Tony Hawk and made famous by Tim Mack, comes from reading the lane front-to-back rather than left-to-right, as the bowlers at the highest levels do, since it directly relates to backend reaction, whether desired or undesired.
Being able to hold a conversation about skid flippiness not only proves you are part of the bowling community, but also makes for a great story some random eavesdropper will be telling her family later about the two goobers talking about skid flippiness.
One Time
“One time!” shouts a bowler hoping for his ball to knock down all 10 pins.
At that exact moment, it makes sense. But over the course of any period of time longer than that exact moment, it is completely preposterous.
The bowler is literally saying he hopes his ball can strike just this one time. Except he says the same thing next frame. And the next frame. He wants his ball to strike one time every time. For an implied pact with the mythical bowling gods, it’s quite selfish and expectant.
There is no way a bowler would ever be happy again if the bowling gods got sick of being taken advantage of and made sure that one time was truly the only time. Shouting this phrase is a maneuver of the highest risk.
Just once, I’d like a skittish skiddish ball to get skid flippy down lane when it matters, giving me the most beautiful strike in the history of bowling. And then I want that to happen indefinitely. Easy.