Bowling and Life

People (coaches in particular) are fond of saying their sport is like life. My high-school basketball coach said on many occasions, "Gentlemen, basketball is like life." And we nodded as though this statement represented some great truth. I know people who golf who say golf is like life. Fill in your favorite sport and add the phrase "is like life."

But bowling, bowling is not like life--and this is why we love it. It resists our attempts to draw facile analogies, to make meaning where none is. Bowling is like nothing, and nothing is quite like bowling. Bowling is irreducible. It is lack and its opposite; presence and absence.

Each year, our basketball team would have a bowling contest. I always lost, and by lost I don't simply mean I didn't win, I mean I came in last or near last. The Condiment was always near the top, as I remember. But this somehow didn't matter. We were still friends. Bowling didn't come between us. Neither did it draw us together. It meant nothing, and this is why it mattered.