Elusive Headpin - Part XIII

“So, it seems that half of us have kept at this and half have not…” Randy stated

“Yep, that certainly seems to be the case. I’m surprised. How do you guys continue to find time for this? My problem with finding any time for recreation is pure logistics.” I commented.

We bowled the first five frames and Ray and Ron carried their respective teammates (Randy and I respectively) so that the score was relatively close. A mere three pins separated the two teams.

In the sixth frame, the roles reversed and the two bowlers that were least practiced took the role of being the lead bowler (first ball shot). Randy threw a shot that skidded off to the left of the headpin and left a 1-3-6-10 fence post for his partner and Ray was equal to that task. My first shot in that sixth frame just missed the head pin but on the right side of the rack leaving 1-2 spare shot that Ron made quick work of.

The seventh was similar and that’s when we started joking about that darn ol’ elusive headpin. Since neither Randy or I could find the pocket leaving a wide selection of sloppy spare shots for their partners.

Going into the tenth frame, we were still three pins apart (Ron and I were leading). Randy started down the approach and much to all of our surprise, threw a beautiful shot that hooked nicely into the pocket yielding a strike. His follow-up to that strike was a solid 9 pin pickup leaving a ten pin for Ray to pick up.

Which meant that we had to at least get a mark in the tenth frame to equal or beat our opponents. I wiped down the ball and tried to focus on at least getting a decent frist shot in. Since it seemed my shots were consistently coming up just shy on the right side of the pocket. I moved over a board and tossed a shot that summarily hooked much to severely picking up only three pins. My partner glared at me because of his always competitive nature he focused and did make a nice recovery picking up the remaining seven pins in a nicely executed shot. He grinned and said “Well, Jim all you have to do is get four pins to tie but, lets try to do a little better than that… k?”

“Sure no prob…” although I had no idea where these shots were likely to end up nor would I be banking on my ability to actually pick up those four pins on demand.

As I stepped up onto the approach, I tried to clear my head and focus on my “normal” sites on the lanes. I began to make my approach but, a little girl that was bowling in the adjacent lane took that opportunity to fall down dropping her ball onto the approach with a loud thud just to my left and slightly out of my peripheral vision. I stopped my legs but had difficulty actually stopping the forward action of my arm and let go of my ball several feet in front of the foul line and at a much slower pace than I would ever had done had no distraction took place.

We all could only stand and watch as my ball slowly rolled down over the second to last arrow on the right. It rolled pretty straight but casually looked like it might be veering off slightly to the right (which was a very bad thing indeed). As the ball reached the pins the only question was would it get four pins (or less). Unfortunately, it was less. The shot only yielded two pins. The final score showed that Ron and I lost by a mere two pins.

Ron scolded me and said that I should have stopped completely once the distraction took place and started over.

“Yeah, well it’s only a game…” I commented. That went over well…

Our old friends basically had a good laugh at my expense.