Last week when the kids had off from school for Veteran’s Day, I took them bowling at the Santa Cruz  Boardwalk Bowl, a formerly skanky joint with pervs hanging out in the bar, that it is now under new management, has been completely remodeled and is finally what it should be:  a fun, happenin’ place to take your family. Even though the snack bar still serves  greasy pizza and nachos with fake cheese,  it also offers healthy alternatives like garden salads topped with roasted chicken and Napa Valley wines.  In addition, the scoring system is completely computerized, which is a godsend to someone like me who never quite understood how you could bowl a  300 game  when you only have the opportunity to knock down 10 pins 10 times. Doesn’t that add up to 100 points? (Please don’t try to explain it to me. Others have tried and failed.)

You see, I’m just not a bowler.  It is not my sport. The loud, crashing sounds of the pins, the thumping of dropped bowling balls and the idea that you are wearing rented shoes that thousands have worn before you is just not for me.  Plus I suck at it. Which is why I was always secretly relieved when my children would  request the bumpers and I enthusiastically complied . “Why sure, honey. We can get the bumpers!”   In the old days, the manager would have to come down to the lane with a crow bar and pull up the bumpers. Not anymore. Imagine my horror when on our recent bowling outing the manager told me that you can  turn on and off the bumpers when you enter your names into the scoring computer. Now, whoever wants bumpers can have them. It is no longer and all or nothing proposition. “Who wants bumpers?” What’s a mom to do? Do I fess up and admit I want them or brave it without? It was my moment of truth. I figured I had to be a proper role model of determination, but mostly because I feared humiliation I decided to tough it out. And I did OK. Not great, but no worse than what I usually did.  By the third game I was making some spares and even hit a few strikes. Still… I would have liked knowing that those bumpers were there. Just in case…