Obama Out of the Game
Last Thursday, on our way to an after-work bowling party, one of my coworkers said she was the worst player when it came to bowling. I proudly told her that she had never met me before then! I was right – I lost the game to everyone.
My score of 37 is apparently not a record. Presidential candidate Barack Obama shares with me the title of worst player. Although generally I am not happy about sharing titles (I will have to do so during my upcoming graduation where, along with another student, I will be the Outstanding Undergraduate Student of my class), this one is indeed promising.
[Barack Obama’s] weekend of campaigning [in Pensylvania] also included a comical trip to the lanes at a bowling alley in Altoona, where he was, by his own admission, terrible.
“My economic plan is better than my bowling,” Obama told fellow bowlers Saturday evening at the Pleasant Valley Recreation Center.
“It has to be,” one man called out.
As he laced up his bowling shoes, Obama let everyone know he hadn’t bowled since Jimmy Carter was president.
He shared a lane with Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey Jr., who endorsed him Friday and joined him on the bus tour, and local homemaker Roxanne Hart. As the game went on, several small children bowled with Obama as well.
Obama’s first ball flew well off his hand but ended up in the gutter. On his second try, he knocked down four pins.
About five lanes over, a young man in a T-shirt that said “Beer Hunter” fell on his backside while bowling and still recorded a strike.
The crowd of regulars pressed in to take pictures, get autographs and rib him on his poor skills.
Obama did improve, nearly getting a strike in one frame, and in the seventh, picking up a spare, giving him a score of 37. Casey had a score of 71 after getting a strike, and Hart, with one less frame, racked up a score of 82.
“I was terrible,” Obama laughed as he shook hands with people in a crowd that gathered outside once word spread he was there.