I Hope Candlepin Bowling Will Bring Me a String of Good Fortune

For the first time in 2021 I went bowling. 

Had you asked me at the beginning of the year when and where I would bowl I would not have told you that it would take until June and that I would be going candlepin bowling at the Southie Bowl in South Boston. But this is exactly what I did today. It was the first time I had gone candlepin bowling since 2002 when I went during a work outing in Lynn, Massachusetts.

Candlepin bowling has some similarities to duckpin bowling which I have done in Connecticut and in Georgia. In both games you have up to three rolls per frame. Only in candlepin, a frame is called a box and a game is called a string. The ball is also smaller than in tenpin bowling, but a candlepin ball is even smaller than a duckpin ball. As with duckpin, no one has thrown a perfect game in candlepin. Indeed, candlepin is even harder than duckpin. While all the time high score in duckpin is 279, it is 245 in candlepin. 

There are two things which set candlepin apart from duckpin. First, there are the pins. In duckpin, the pins are tiny while in candlepin the pins are long and skinny. Second, in duckpin if there are pins lying around after you've taken your first or second shot then one must reset the pins. This is not the case in candlepin. The fallen candlepins remain and can be used as a means to knock down the remaining pins.

I am no better at candlepin than I am at duckpin or, for that matter, tenpin bowling. But there is the opportunity to get better. Today, my goal was to get out and have fun for the sake of having fun for the first time since the end of 2020 and that goal was attained.

Now that I'm back in the Boston area, I plan to visit other candlepin bowling venues and possibly join a league should the opportunity present itself. Hopefully candlepin bowling will help open me up to social interactions which I did not previously have during my first tenure here. I hope candlepin bowling will bring me a string of good fortune. It might not happen overnight. In which case, I'll just have to roll with it.