We know she had a 600 series. If you don't know bowling, that means she once bowled three 200 games (or the average thereof) in a three game set.
We know she didn't ever bowl a 300 game, a perfect game of 12 consecutive strikes, but a 600 series is a very significant accomplishment.
I also know that she picked up two very difficult splits--what is known as the Big Four and also the dreaded 7/10 Split, a nearly impossible feat.
When she bowled in leagues she had a vest with patches certifying the three significant accomplishments I have described. For frequent bowlers, such patches are like the medals on a military uniform. If you saw someone with the 7-10 patch, you would take notice that you are in the presence of greatness.
The reason I am talking about these things right now is that I am spending a month in my wife's native Romania, and going bowling at a local mall has become a nice way to spend part of the day here.
And as I have been bowling, I have been increasing my own score by remembering advice she gave me over the years. A few years back, here in Romania, I bowled my highest game ever--a 205, and crucial to achieving that was remembering at a key moment advice that my mother gave me. I tell the story of that game in this video.
And this got me to thinking that I don't know what my own mother's actual highest scoring game was.
My father, who bowled in leagues with her for many decades, has also passed. I asked my living siblings, one of whom also bowled in leagues with her for some years, and he doesn't remember. He knew the information about the 600 series, and those two splits, but does not remember the high score. Obviously it was good, somewhere way up in the 200's. But the exact number of it is now officially lost.
I am taking this kind of hard because I know this is a fact of history that at one time was extraordinarily important to someone. Someone important to me.
But this information is gone. This saddens me and I have to let this go, but I decided to write this post just to acknowledge it all.
So here's what we can assume. Getting a 600 series means you score a high percentage of strikes across three games in a row. Like anyone, she had days that were better than others. But there must somewhere in there have been a day when an even higher percentage of strikes managed to land inside of one specific game. Again, we know she didn't get a 300, but a score beyond 250 seems almost certain. Past that it becomes purely speculative what that best game could have been.
So I content myself with this thought. I wasn't there, but I know what the scene certainly must have been. It would have happened some evening when my parents were bowling in a league. Something like every Thursday night. And the first game was just a warm up. But let's imagine, in the second game, she had a run of strikes. She left a pin standing at some frame, but she picked it up for the spare. Some more strikes. I remember her always saying that a strike in the 9th frame is crucial to higher scoring game. She got it. And when that game was over, her team and the opponents were congratulating her and were happy to have even watched this terrific game unfold. And she knew that she had just bowled her highest scoring game ever. Whatever that number was, it replaced her previous best game.
This new number would remain her best game until her death. And she thought about that game from time to time. For a number of years before her death, her health faded in such a way that bowling at all would be impossible. And that itself sad because of how much bowling had meant to her in her life. But she still always had the memory of that highest scoring game.
I put together a pretty decent game myself this morning (I use the name Andrei here in Romania). If things had not fallen apart in the middle, it would have been a 200 game. Indeed, it was more than a 100 in the 5th frame.
And I can never bowl without feeling close to my mother.
No comments:
Post a Comment