170

The first time I played bowling, I scored 170.

That was the problem.

A first attempt is supposed to be clumsy enough to create modest expectations. Mine gave me the opposite impression. I looked at the score and decided that bowling had apparently been waiting for me all my life.

I expected the future to be simple. Play a little more, improve the technique, pass 200, and then continue upward. Instead, the more I played, the worse I became.

After a while, scoring above 100 was difficult.

The first result had turned into an accusation. I had done 170 once, so every weaker game seemed to require an explanation. Was the ball wrong? The lane? My release? Too much force? Too little? Once I began thinking about technique, a movement that had felt natural became crowded with instructions.

Perhaps the first score was skill. Perhaps it was luck. I never found a satisfying answer.

What I learned was that one good result can be more misleading than one bad one. A poor beginning leaves room for improvement. A brilliant beginning creates a standard before you have earned it.

If I had started at sixty and reached one hundred, I might have felt successful. Because I started at 170, the same one hundred felt like decline.

The pins did not care about my expectations.

They simply kept standing.