Strike!!

My parents were avid bowlers.  I remember being very young and spending a lot of time at the bowling alley in Angleton, reading comic books while they bowled.  We had one of those old, massive tv sets in our front room, and it was covered with trophies, both from his kart racing days and from all the bowling tournaments he and mom had won over the years.  As Dad got older, he continued to play whenever the opportunity arose, and he always did pretty well.

Sometimes, when we would fly up to Indiana to visit them, we would go bowling.  And he would kick our butts.  It was crazy.  He continued doing well even when his sight started to fail due to the side effects of some medication.  This mystified me, but I had learned over the years to expect Dad to find ways to overcome most obstacles.  I asked him about it after he just finished beating me.  Again.

"Well, you know I can't see the pins no more, but I never looked at the pins no ways.  You see them little arrows on the floor over there?" he gestured at the lane, and I looked over and saw what he meant.  "They tell you where the ball's gonna go, so I just use them.  Now, I can't see them neither, but I know where they are."  In his late 70's, the man was blind as a bat and was still a better bowler than me.