Life is full of amazing, tender moments vastly inferior to bowling a perfect game.
1. Falling In Love
When you meet that right somebody, your life completely changes. Your heart rate increases, your skin gets all warm, and you realize that life is so much more beautiful with this other person than you could have ever imagined it being by yourself. This is about 1/100th of the feeling of bowling a perfect game. Billions of people have fallen in love, but only a select few have bowled a 300. Doesn’t even compare.
2. Getting Your Dream Job
Landing that job you’ve been working toward since you were just a kid is deeply powerful, but it can’t hold a candle to the way people gather round and cheer your name over and over after you’ve bowled a 300. Especially because for months after, people will come up to you in public and slap you on the back—and forget about having to buy your own beer. In each frothy sip, you are able to relive the thrill of perfection.
3. Watching The Birth Of Your Child
You’ve never witnessed anything as magical as seeing new human life enter the world for the first time, unless you’ve ever bowled 12 strikes in a row. Your child will die one day, but your place in bowling history is eternal.
4. Graduating From College
A college diploma is a shit stain compared to the plaque you got on the bowling alley wall when you tossed a 12-bagger and instantly became a local demigod. The way the night started out so normally, then three strikes in a row, then a six-pack, then eight up. You were just effortlessly humming those babies into the pocket all night, painting the chimney without getting in your own head. Simply incredible.
5. Bowling A 270
Bowling a 270 is truly a unique thrill, but try for that 300 and you’ll see that it’s just so much sweeter. A 270 will still be a top-five memory for sure, but the 300 is just on the next level.
The thing about bowling a 300 is that no one can say, “You could have done better.” It’s perfection. While you can second-guess every other decision in your life, whether it’s your spouse, your career, or your relationship with your family, you can never question those 12 perfect strikes.
6. Getting Married
You know that if a documentary were ever to be made about your life, the climax would be bowling that 300, not getting married. Maybe it could be called 60 Feet To Glory. That’s a good name.
7. Watching Your Child’s First Steps
When you close your eyes, you can see that night again: You’ve got perfect action on that shine dog and as soon as it leaves your hands, you know it’s going right down pine alley to kiss the white ladies goodnight. It’s a classic hat-turner while Rob and Jenny are kissing in the broom closet and the house is on its feet.
Remember that feeling, having a live nine-bagger just three away from the whole possum pot and you’ve got a chimney-painter on deck and you better believe pine alley is lit like Christmas morning, but the kids aren’t getting coal. Not this year.
The beak is headed west on the Bayshore Expressway because your oilman’s got the nose for traffic and beads are bees when the chimney looks brand new and the soup’s gone back to the kitchen for extra pepper. Rob and Jenny are two ticks to midnight and your score sheet’s a muddy field and the white ladies are praying at church and you’ve done it you’re king of the shine dogs and no one’s chimney is newer. You have become an eternal force that shall whisper through the trees and mountains forever, for you have achieved perfection.
