The dead man's balls

I've always loved bowling, never was much good at it, but there is always something satisfying about knocking shit down. It's probably the same reason I like target shooting.

Back in 1998 I watched the Big Lebowski and it rekindled my interest in bowling. I had my own business and in between jobs I would roll a few games. I ended up spending a lot of money bowling that year.

So I joined a league, it ended up saving me tons of money. The people at the brunswick bowl would feel sorry for me having to pay $70 for an afternoon in an empty bowling alley, so they fudged the bill for me more often than not.

One day, my mother in law showed up at my house. Her visits usually fill me with dread because there is always some crazy shit going on. More often than not she wants something from me or to make my life really annoying.

Much to my surprise, she opens up the trunk of her car and it's filled with bowling balls.

My eyes went wide, there were five of them and a pair of bowling shoes.

She was all proud of herself, mother in law had gone to a garage sale and the person was selling all the stuff that had belonged to her recently deceased husband.

Bowling balls are like Jock straps, you really don't want to use one that belonged to someone else and it's very unlikely that one would fit in the correct places if you know what I mean...

She got all these balls and accessories for 5 bucks, so I gave her the money and took the stuff to my workshop. I had no idea what I was going to do with all this shit.

I went through the balls. 4 of them were cheap plastic ones you can get at any sporting goods store for 14 bucks. The shoes were size 8. The man had giant hands and itty bitty feet.

There was one name brand ball labeled " the angle" It just so happened to have my initials on it. Seems the dead man and I had something in common. I just figured it was a weird coincidence.

I took the monogrammed ball to the pro shop that was owned by a retired pro bowler to get it checked out and possibly plugged and re-drilled for me as a spare.

He took one look at it and said that I had one of the best bowling balls of 20 some odd years ago and he himself had used one to win a championship in 1980.

He measured my hand, had me put my fingers in different gauges, then prepared to plug and drill the ball to fit. He stopped and said:

"This ball is already drilled exactly for your hand, I've never seen anything like it"

I tested the fit and it did indeed feel pretty good.

I went out on the lanes to try it out. The ball was drilled for finger tip bowling, and the two middle fingers were drilled first knuckle shallow for putting a spin on the ball.

I wasn't used to this and I ended up accidentally dropping the ball on my approach.

It rolled down the right side of the lane next to the gutter. It teetered on the edge all the way down. Then at the last second, it made a left turn and knocked down all the pins.

I tried several more times and found that all I had to do was drop the ball at the right side of the lane to make a strike. The ball did all the work.

My score was the highest ever at 274.

It almost seemed as if there was someone guiding it.

For about a year, I kept a 240 average. However I soon realized that this kind of bowling wasn't any fun.

The dead man's posessed ball was doing all the work and I had not truely learned to bowl. It was like cheating. I didn't like it.

So I went out and bought another nice new professional ball and I'm now trying to learn to bowl properly.


But, if I ever want to impress someone with an ultra high score...I just whip out the dead man's ball...

I took all the cheap balls out to my dad's place and shot them to pieces with my 30-30 just so they wouldn't get into the hands of an unscrupulous bowler.

I would hate to see some yahoo S.O.B win the PBA world championship by cheating with one of those damn things.