I have a confession: I generally avoid activities at which I suck. I’m not sure if this is due to the fact that I hate losing or that I’m not having a good time if I’m not winning.
Oh wait. Is that the same thing?
Regardless, bowling is one such activity. So, when my friend Eva invited my kids and me to go bowing at Brunswick Zone in Wheat Ridge, I hesitated before deciding that socializing with friends in an air-conditioned building far outweighed any personal failures.
We had six moms juggling more than 20 kids so I did not have time to care about the game until I realized that out of the moms, I had come in dead last.
I’m pretty sure the toddlers in the bumper lanes beat me, too.
I laughed it off but have to admit, my fire was fueled just a bit. We went on to play another game and I fared a lot better, even knocking out a strike and a spare. I was still not invested until Eva announced she was one frame away from declaring victory.
Here’s the thing about Eva. On the surface, she appears laid-back but I’ve seen her competitive drive ignited when she talks about her son Rory’s Olympic gymnastics ambitions. I also feared for my life when I got caught in the crossfire as she and her husband Jon watched the United States lose in the World Cup.
The closet competition hounds are the ones you need to fear the most.
Eva may have been one frame away from winning but I noticed that victory was within my reach: she needed to choke and I needed a strike. And so I did what any overly-confident and incompetent bowler would do: I started smack-talking her.
In the end, she did not choke but got choked up just enough that there was a window of opportunity. As I deliberately did my approach, my sports psychology strategies of yesteryear came into play as I chanted, “Strike, strike, strike.”
And miraculously enough, that is exactly what I did. When I won the game, I waxed Biblical by prophesying, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first!”
My final score? A blistering 116.
It was a new lane record, I’m sure.
I'm a Canadian-born mom of two, former Denver Post columnist, family travel writer, editor of MileHighMamas.com and 9News contributor. Expert on all things Utah, Denver, family and travel. Lover of laughter and life. Happily married to a man obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin. 