First 600

I need to make a big deal of Adam's first 600 series which happened last Wednesday evening. We all get there at different times (he was about 9 years old when I did it for the first time) and this was his. He blasted through the barrier in a way that should eliminate it from his mind.

It was a really fun night of family bowling.

Oddly enough, this was the first time I'd ever bowled with Adam as an adult. We'd bowled together in adult-junior tournaments over the years but he'd continued to bowl as a junior until leaving for college. When I begged off on bowling for the summer (enough already!), Adam volunteered and was accepted. He and I talked about it early in the evening and realized that this was the first time in at least a couple years that we'd bowled together in any way. I was there because I was asked to sub for the daughter of a team member (Mark's daughter was off celebrating her birthday). Oddly enough, we played against a team that includes Mark's wife. Another member of the opposition is a recent high school graduate whose father I'd played against for several years in scratch leagues and Adam had known and played against since he started bowling. Typical.

Nearly everyone knows everyone in this league. Stick around a couple years and the family tree gets added to the rest of known people. It's friendly and informal. It wasn't one of the things we were looking for when we joined our first league nearly a dozen years ago but within a couple years, it was a part of our family life (at one point it seemed that Jonathan was doing all his learning about people in a bowling alley, he's come of age there in many respects). Bowling families are actually pretty common in this area. That was the reason I got to know Robert Smith (and his game) the year before he went out on tour. He'd bowled with his mother and a couple others in a limited average scratch league I was bowling in at the time and we bumped into each other from time to time.

Back to Wednesday...

Adam was doing well in warm up and continued his form and line at the start with a strike which he ran to a five bagger before leaving a seven pin. He finished with a very nice 254. In the next game, our whole team fell apart and he joined in. In the third game, he and I once again got into it, playing a game of one-upmanship which he finished with a 232.

In the 10^th frame of the last game, I knew I was shooting for 700 and I g'acked it, leaving the first 10 pin of the evening. I picked it off and struck out (where was that ball the first time around!) for 695, but I also realized that Adam wasn't too far behind me.

After a bit of accounting, we realized that Adam had a 650, wow!

I was really surprised that it was his first 600. What made the last game more fun (and perhaps a bit easier for all of us) was a lot of kidding around, teasing and frame by frame comparison (none of us knew what my handicap would be, although I was assuming it would be pretty small and with my last game I wound up with nothing) that left us mostly caught up in the moment and left him little time to realize where he was. He'd strike and I had to match it; when I did, I told him he had to match it. And on it went. He had little of the threshold awareness that can make numerical hurdles so difficult (I was intensely aware of the 650 and 700 barriers as I approached them, but they faded after I took them out).

Now that he's done 600 (and then some!), it's no longer a big deal and the rest is in front of him. He's got good rev's on the ball (something I was surprised to see) and once he learns to do it repetitively (he was doing it pretty well last week), he'll be a very good amateur bowler.

Adam mentioned that I'd once told him that he'd kick my butt (while we were playing basketball, oh, about a decade ago). He still will, very shortly I think. But not quite yet...