I've been bowling for about two weeks everyday 3 games. I'm trying to get better and so each time I go, ironically enough there is an expert bowler a few lanes down that wants to teach me a couple tricks of the trade. I don't ask, they usually just request their teaching/sports skills of wisdom to me. Today, a gentleman who appeared to be in his mid-seventies who told me he had been bowling for forty years showed me what he termed the "Old school way of bowling." Initially he asked me very politely if I was a beginner bowler. I guess he didn't want to assume that I'd been playing for forty years, lol.
He explained if you watch you tube, the professional bowlers are doing a new way of bowling which is in his opinion not the "right way to bowl.". A couple of days earlier another expert bowler taught me a few other tips, but what he taught wasn't important, today's lesson was from Mr. 40 Years of Bowling.
This gentleman related to me in ways I would understand. Bowling is like ballet he said and he showed me how to hold the ball, how to move my feet, how to throw the ball (palms up), how to hold my left arm out for balance, etc. He also gave me a few other tips, at one point I got a strike and I wanted to tell him and thank him for the strike.
At another point when I only got a few pins down he gave me additional pointers, he said something really profound, "at least you are willing to learn."
After my multiples games of bowling yesterday, I went to the Goodwill, across the way from the bowling alley. I heard it was teacher discount day while I was there and I got 25% off (side note: as a writer I rarely get discounts except for Barnes & Noble, oh come to think of it that's a teacher discount too, oops). Anyway, while perusing the discounted books, a woman got really excited, she exclaimed to me and another Goodwill patron, "hey will either of you or both of you listen to me for just a minute." I walked over to her and listened, "my aunt wrote this children's book." She showed us the cover. I had seen the book before so I asked if the author was a teacher and if she'd autographed it. The gal said in so many words that her aunt had been a teacher and that yes, it was autographed inside. She placed the book back on the shelf and turned to me and the guy that was looking at the other discounted books and she said, "I just had to tell someone, it isn't everyday that you find a book written by someone you know." The guy told her, "pretty cool." Because I hadn't showered and had just finished six (yes, usually three) rounds of bowling and because I don't want my cookbooks or books on the Goodwill shelves, I didn't divulge my authorship status of 86 plus books. (About the same number as my bowling score, lol.)
But while at the Goodwill, I picked up "Who Moved My Cheese?" and read it voraciously half of the book last night.
I called my son and told him that I am reading, "Who moved my cheese?" He said it, "sounded naughty." I told him in all seriousness that he's reading it next. Salacious and all.
In the book, "Who Moved My Cheese?" it tells a lesson about the two "little human people" and the "two mice". The lesson is about change and our ability to adapt. (Side note: I believe the book written long before Covid helps us with the additional challenges of life and living through a pandemic.)
So far the gist of the book is that the little human people can't accept inevitable change that the cheese has been moved and they keep going back and waiting, wondering, and wanting to eat the cheese, not cut it. LOL.
The mice have moved on once they realized that the cheese had been moved and they are looking to find more cheese, not dwelling on the change that has just transpired, rather springing into mouse action.
I can keep bowling the way I think I am supposed to bowl, or I can take tips from bowlers who have bowled for years. To me it relates to life. I can think I know everything or I can be willing to change and adapt, like today I created multiple versions of my cookbooks into new formats, "e-books, pdf's, audio books." I am changing with the times.
After our bowling lesson, he wanted to share a bible lesson. What church do you go to? I told him the names of two churches. He then harped quite a bit on the being catholic bit but he had another interesting point. He said, "if you are headed to Hawaii on an airplane or on a boat, doesn't matter, but if you are off by 10 degrees will you get to Hawaii? I said, "no." He was using it for an analogy about coming to Christ. A lot of people think Catholics worship Mary and what not. We revere Mary ask Mary to put in a good word for us to her son, but evangelical Christians think otherwise. That's a whole other lesson for later.
I wasn't about to teach him a lesson. But I learned a valuable lesson--if you listen to others and take what you like and leave the rest, you can learn to be a better bowler, and believer.
Now I think I'll make a cheesecake!
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