Exercises in Humility

Hope everyone had a lovely VD. Jaimie's fleegan dumped her last night to go to his niece's basketball game, and my husband dumped me to go to work. How lame are they? Good thing Jaimie and I don't believe in Valentine's Day.

So as not to be total humbugs, we went on a date without the guys. TUESDAY NIGHT BOWLING WITH THE LUTHERANS!!! YOW!

Bowling with the Lutherans is so much fun. We drink and cuss and bowl. Except not all Lutherans cuss. One sweet old lady on our team would say "BAD WORD!" everytime she wasn't happy with her roll. It made me giggle.

I learned something about myself last night, bowling with Lutherans, that I'd like to share: I have no luck. I am luckless, for better or for worse.

We bowled two games, and my scores, respectively, were 72 and 45. The first is bad enough, but the second is shockingly bad. People's eyes got wide when I told them. I felt like they were going to put my picture on the wall next to the people who've bowled perfect 300s, because my achievement warranted recognition as well.

There was this lane beside ours with a bunch of high school kids playing, most of which were not what you might call proficient bowlers. One guy bowled like he thought the gutter was the target. Watching them over the course of the night, I noticed something. No matter how bad they were, they made a decent shot at least one time in four. Most of them had scored at least one strike by the end of the night. In the two times I've bowled with the Lutherans, four games total, I've scored exactly one spare and no strikes. This, I have decided, is because I have absolutely no luck.

That's not at all a bad thing from a certain point of view. Those kids beside me had luck, like most people do. They had good luck and bad luck. I have neither. I can't think of anything in particular about myself and my life to make me believe that anything terribly unlucky has ever happened to me. Lots of bad things have happened, of course, but not unlucky things. No flukes, abberations, or tragedies of fate. Which brings us to good luck.

Let's take bowling. I know nothing about bowling technique, the feel of the ball, the right throw, what weight I should be using, any of that. So, is it bad luck that I bowled four zero frames in one game? No. It stands to reason. It displays, rather, an exceptional lack of good luck. Some kind of good luck would have to be involved for me to do well in any endeavor for which I am so poorly equipped.

The way I'll interpret this is that in most things, I'll get no tip of the scales in either direction based on any unfair influence of fate. I can handle that. I'll work on my bowling skills and eventually get better, knowing that while I may never acheive an undeserved strike, I'll also never blow the big game.