Strikes and Spares

If you've never had an issue with your weight it's likely you don't understand the mental ups and downs that come with an effort to drop major pounds.

And to be perfectly honest, I thought that aspect - the mental struggle - was rubbish.

I'd see people on television, or even come across them in public, who spoke with great emotion about the difficulties they were facing; about the feelings of failure that came with even one slip up, and how great was the temptation just to chuck it all and go back to that unhealthy lifestyle for good.

I can't tell you the number of times I wanted to grab one of those people by the collar, shake them violently, and yell "Get over yourself! If you want to lose weight, do it!"

All the while, mind you, I'm ignoring the fact that I'm slowly growing to the size of a small iceberg.

So to say I have a bit of a different perspective now would be something of an understatement. Those of you who have followed this blog for any length of time have seen me go through incredible highs and terrible lows - sometimes within the span of a week.

And many of you at one time or another have wanted to grab me by the neck and give me a good, hard shake.

Trust me. I've wanted to assault myself. And at times I have. There are times that pistol-whipping myself back in line has been effective.

But more often than not it's something smaller, significantly more subtle, that gets the message through my thick skull.

And last night was one of those moments.

Don't ask me how, but last evening my wife and I ended up "glow bowling" with a group of young people from our church. Glow bowling begins at midnight. They kill the house lights, get the disco ball and other such lighting fired up, and basically you bowl as much as you can until 2 a.m.

Flash back to about three years ago, which would be the last time I went bowling.

It was a disaster. We rolled three games, and by time it was done I could barely walk. I had zero stamina, my back and knees were killing me, and I got worse and worse as the day wore on.

It was embarrassing. I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe and - worse - for someone who used to be extremely athletic and competitive, I was just awful.

I left the bowling alley that day both in pain and feeling sorry for myself.

So last night I wasn't sure what to expect. Besides the fact that it was so late (we old folks are used to getting in bed well before midnight), I just wasn't sure what that kind of physical activity would do to my body.

I was pleasantly surprised.

There were six of us confined to one lane, so we basically got 2 1/2 games in before the deadline. And I got stronger and better as the late night wore on.

Took me a while to get going. Couldn't find a consistent release point and I was horrible in the first game. But began to find something of a groove as the second game wore on, and ended up rolling a 143 despite the fact that I did get a strike the entire way. But I did pick up the spare in each of the last six frames.

It was during that stretch that I had my mini-epiphany.

It began to dawn on me that I was getting stronger as the frames rolled by. There was no pain, no shortness of breath. None of the things that made my last attempt at the game so horrible.

And best of all, to me anyway, my competitive juices started flowing again. One of the guys with us had blown all of us away in the first game, rolling something like a 170. And he jumped out to a pretty good start in the second game.

But as I hung around that old feeling came back. For the first time in a long time. I began to play mental games with him ("Hey man, don't think about all that open space to the left. You can get that single, lonely pin and pick up the spare"), and sure enough he started to think. And when he did, his game fell apart.

At the same time, mine was getting better and I came from about 30 pins down to beat him with the 143.

In the third game, I had gone 9/spare, 9/spare, 9/spare, 8/spare and 5/spare in the first five frames before we hit the time limit. Eleven straight frames over two games picking up the spare.

Folks, there was a time in my life when I bowled quite a bit. My high game is somewhere in the 190s. I'd never had a stretch like that in my life.

And trust me, the scores are irrelevant. I'm a horrible bowler, and I know it.

But it was the situation. The culmination of events. The fact that while all those young people - ages 17-24 - were wearing down at 2 a.m., I was getting stronger.

Seems like a little thing, but to me it was a bit of positive reinforcement that I've been sorely needing.

This morning I'm feeling better - mentally - than I have in weeks.

All it took was a good shaking.