on one rainy afternoon, a suggestion was made that we could go bowling. among the various extended family members there was a 12-year old son of my wife's cousin, who proudly proclaimed that he was a "pretty good bowler" and could beat all of us. having spent my fair share of time with various deacons quorums of the world, I recognize unsubstantiated boasting when I hear it, and this was definitely just such an instance. After a little ribbing and good-natured smack talk, five grown-up men and a 12-year old piled into a car and headed to the local lanes.

My first sign that we were perhaps in over our heads was when we arrived at the local bowling alley on a tuesday afternoon to find the parking lot full. "Maybe its a lot of birthday parties?" I thought to myself, as birthday parties are basically the only experience I've ever had with bowling. Wrong. Apparently, in semi-rural north carolina, bowling is still quite popular, and we actually had to wait for a lane. "There was a tournament here the last few days, so these guys are probably just hanging around afterwards," the 12-year old explained. I really began to have my suspicions when some of the local patrons and participants from the aforementioned $5,000 winner-take-all tournament came up to us and approached our group and apparently were on a first-name basis with my wife's cousin's kid. The management certainly knew him, because while we were all getting the gross shoes and choosing out our generic bowling balls, they escorted him back to the players lounge, where he later emerged wearing his own shoes and brandishing his own ball.

the kid is first up, and we're giving him a hard time, asking him if he wants to raise the bumpers, or if he needs to use the 8-pound ball, or not to hurt himself when he bends down to roll the ball between his legs. He blocks all of that out, stands up, doesn't even put his fingers in the holes, and does one of those really-spinny bowling ball shots where the ball dances right along the edge of the right gutter for most of the trip down the lane, and then swings back with a vengeance, striking directly between the first and third pin. its not one of those strikes where you're hoping maybe a loose pin will accidentally knock down some of the others; its one of those strikes where the pins are all simultaneously airborne as they knock into each other in a mutually-assured destruction where each and every pin is determined to knock down all of the other pins. It was like a bomb went off. He doesn't say anything and just walks back.

You can imagine how the next 1 hour and 57 minutes went. He quickly pounced on us, giving us "useful tips" that were really backhanded observations about how much we sucked at bowling. I wasn't terrible--i think my best game was a 147, the kind of score you might not hate when you only bowl maybe once per year. But having a 12-year talk trash to you while you do it is a truly humbling experience. The kid's lowest game was 217. It was unbelievable.