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Monday, October 13, 2008
A Day Out With The KidsMy youngest son turned 5 earlier this month and one of the presents he got was a new bowling ball. We had to
order the ball from a distributor (like many pro shops this one no longer carries inventory) and it took about a week for
the ball to come in. It took another two weeks to finally coordinate a time with the pro shop owner (whose shop hours are
stranger than something an owl on methamphetamine might keep) to come in and have it drilled.
The day we finally
settled on was a Friday afternoon and, having arrived at the center a little before the time the shop was scheduled to open,
decided to bowl a few games while we waited. The 40-lane center was almost dead empty, save for a mom and son who were bowling
on the lane right next to us. I'm not sure why the guy at the desk would place us right next to each other in an empty
40-lane center, but I do know that I'm pretty sure he's the same guy who takes the urinal right next to you in the
public bathroom when there are ten other empty ones and you're the only two in there. But he did give my boys their rental
shoes for free, so all is forgiven.
I wrangled up my two sons (the oldest one is 7) and we put our shoes on, typed
our names in and commenced the bowling. About midway through the first game my oldest son, who cares for bowling about as
much as a fox cares for the life of an unborn chicken, decided he would drop the 6-pound house ball onto the lane to see if
it could make it all the way down to the pins by itself. To my amazement, it made it about halfway before getting hung up
on one of its overly beveled finger holes and stopped smack-dab in the center of the lane.
The porter, a man about
my age who's been working at the center since it opened more than 20 years ago (and whom we affectionately refer to as
"Super Dave") came down to remove the urgent "dead ball situation." As he was about to go get it, I had
the brilliant idea of announcing my intention to do a trick shot. "Anybody want to see me hook it around the ball and
get a strike?" I said. Of course the 5, 7 and 9-year old bowling next to us thought it was a great idea. Super Dave gave
me his blessing, although the look on his face indicated that he would rather have lit cigarettes put out in his eyeballs.
I got up on the approach and saw there were about 15 boards between the right edge of the orange 6-pounder sitting
like a dead squirrel in the middle of the lane and the gutter. I had actually been playing 17, which was petty much exactly
where the ball was sitting, so I knew I needed to go well right of that to get around the ball. I felt a slight bit of anxiety
as I lined up the shot and began my approach, not unlike the last time I needed to strike to make the cut in a regional (and
remembering how infrequently I was able to pull this off didn't help matters much). I somehow managed to put those thoughts
behind me, made a pretty decent shot and slow-hooked it out to around the fifth board, where it made a nice arc back into
the pocket and sent all ten pins into the pit. The crowd went wild. Super Dave breathed a sigh of relief so big that, in retrospect,
it made me think he might have been on the verge of a pulmonary embolism prior to my successful execution of the shot.
After two games of bowling, my boys had had it and they decided to sit it out while I bowled solo to finish off the
games we'd paid for. In the middle of the last game I left a wicked 7-10 split which kind of made me a little mad, so
I announced to the gallery "How would you like to see me pick this up?!" Of course, they were for it. Without a
thought of how disappointed they might be should I not be able to pull off the million-to-one miracle (that thought came later,
which unfortunately for me, is usually the way it happens) I took off. A couple feet back on the approach to accommodate the
longer steps and higher backswing needed to give it the full business, I launched one hard and fast, cross-lane headed straight
at the ten-pin. I thought to myself "You know, this one has a real chance even though I don't think I've ever
seen anyone in this house bounce one out of the pit in my 20 years of bowling here." (Indeed, the pits at Brunswick Zone
Simi Valley are like veritable black holes).
The ball blasted into the left half of the ten pin like Hulk Hogan
smashing a hapless tomato can of an opponent into the ring ropes, pinning it into the corner of the pit before squirting it
like a wet bar of soap up and over the edge of the pin deck toward the 7 pin. It bounced up and tackled its twin bedpost with
a speed so blinding that it took what seemed like a couple of seconds for anyone to process exactly just what had happened.
Bedlam ensued. Young school-aged boys giddily jumped around like, well, young, giddy school-aged boys. Super Dave shook his
head and smiled with unsurprised surprise. The mom bowling on the lane next to us had a look of new appreciation for bowling
and bowlers, possibly even elevating us in her mind to the same status as a local state fair rodeo. Perhaps most significantly,
the guy at the desk actually looked up from his want ads.
After that, the 9-year-old boy on the lane next to us
couldn't ask me enough questions about bowling. I told him about leagues and the importance of practice and how many bowling
balls I own. I told him that I had started bowling when I was about his age and spent a lot of time practicing to be able
to reach the point I am now...leaving out the part about being a has-been former regional part-time casher, of course. But
there was no denying the fact that he definitely thought I was a pretty cool dude, which I'm fairly certain is quite a
rare feat in bowling these days. As we talked, however, I did begin to sense a bit of a look on his mom's face that read
either, "Please stop encouraging my son to be a bowler" or "I'm making a mental note of your face so I
can check the local database of known child sex offenders to make sure you're not on it as soon as I get home."
Sensing this, I cut my conversation with the boy short, but not without offering him some free games that I had in
my bowling bag. The look on his face was positively priceless. It's so rare to see a look of pure thanks on a kid of that
age...believe me, after buying my kids almost the entire set of Batman Legos for their latest birthdays (to the point where
my living room now looks like a Tim Burton fever dream) and still not glimpsing that look even once, I know. It was a great
feeling to be able to see that look reflected back to me from someone else. And it made me remember why, despite all of the
pain and struggle that has gone into becoming a bowler and working in the bowling industry, I'm thankful to have made
the choice I did.
1:15 pm edt
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LIVIN' THE DREAM:
How
to get what you want, find true meaning and save the world by bowling!
AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR
Q:
What is the book about?
A: The book is about how the valuable
lessons I learned through my lifelong involvement in bowling saved my life and transformed me from an unhappy cynic into a
blissfully happy optimist.
Q: What made you decide to write it?
A: I had been out of the bowling industry for about two years and I had hit a very low point in my attitude about
life. Through the help of a family member, I was able to rediscover the important lessons about success, spirituality and
connecting with others. I was so excited about this transformation that I decided to write a book that attempts to detail
the metamorphosis while outlining the important lessons I remembered.
Q: How is this
book different from other self-help books?
A: The book is different in a number
of ways. First, I am a very unlikely person to have written a self-help book. If you had known me before I'd written the book,
you'd know precisely what I mean. But that fact alone reveals how strongly I felt about writing it, because I knew that if
I could change for the better, then I felt anyone could do it and that there was a good chance that I could help a lot of
people by describing the process and arranging the pieces in a way that could be easily understood.
The
other key point of difference is the way the book is arranged. The story is structured into three parts, The Method, Some
Cool Tricks and For the Hard-Core Cynics, each of which contain the important lessons I wanted to share. Every chapter is
also broken up with a narrative of my personal story, told for the purpose of detailing my amazing attitude transformation.
It begins with the extremely low point when others felt the need to reach out to help me to remember the important things
in life and goes on to detail the many people that helped me to learn the most important life lessons, including: my childhood
friend Robert Smith, my father (a former President of Disneyland International), PBA Chairman Chris Peters and former PBA
CEO Steve Miller.
Q: Is the book as funny as your blogs?
A: Yes! But there is also a serious side too.
Q: How is your book different from
something like The Secret?
A: My book is similar to The Secret
in that it proposes a method for success, but it is different in a number of ways. First, it is a bit more practical when
it comes to outlining the method for achieving success. The Secret comes very close to describing a similar method
for success in its "Ask, Believe, Receive" mantra. In my book, the first two of these elements ("Ask"
and "Believe") are integral (although I call them "Dream" and "Self-Belief"), but I believe
there has to be some proactive work done to achieve the goal. I call it hard work (which turns a lot of people off, of course)
but to use the model of The Secret, you would simply replace the word "Receive" with "Retrieve."
The best part of all this (and the good news for the folks who don't want to have to work hard) is that once you decide on
what you want and then you begin to believe you can get it, the work is no longer hard, but becomes a fun activity that fills
your days with joy and purpose.
Second, my book spends a significant amount of time discussing
how to deal with your success once you've attained it (and that conducting yourself in this manner before
you reach your goals will actually help you get there even faster). Probably the best way to describe my
book is that it's a cross between The Secret and the late Randy Pausch's book, The Last Lecture.
But I also quote a number of more research-driven books like Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, Sam Harris' The
End of Faith and Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate to help me make my point.
Q: Do you have to be a bowler to like this book?
A: Absolutely
not! Bowling obviously plays a major role (although it really serves more as the setting rather than as the primary focal
point) because of my involvement with the sport my whole life. But the lessons bowling taught me are lessons I could have
learned if I had chosen to be a golfer or a doctor or a writer (oops, I guess that one's a bad example now). My hope is that
the book will find its way into the hands of people who don't bowl and that these people will come away with a new appreciation
for bowlers and the sport of bowling.
Q: What is your goal with the book?
A: That is a simple one. To help as many people as possible to experience the gift of embracing an optimistic way
of life and to help them reap its many rewards. 
