DISILLUSIONED AT LIFE WHEN I WAS 17

I was driving home with the Voice from the Driver's Seat at about 23:45 and for some odd reason I flashed on the sport of bowling.  I think it was because I met a personal friend of mine who used to be a very proficient, semi-pro bowler a few hours ago.  How I discovered this is not really important tonight.  Right now the state of my mind is where it was when I also flashed on the discovery of what a 300 "perfect" game really is.  I was seventeen and I had been working at my new job, earning real money for the first time in my life.  I'm not kidding.  I was hauling down $0.75 per hour.  One day the "older guys" invited me out to go bowling with them on Sunday afternoon.  I was not sure that I should go because I had really never picked up a bowling ball yet in my entire life.  It was only Thursday, so I begged off and decided that first, I would go bowling with my own buddies to see what it really felt like.  None of us had ever done this, so it was rather pathetic.   I do admit that we did have a good time.  Since we did not know how to keep score, we just flailed away and laughed and giggled our way through about one hour's worth of nonsense.  When I got home, EFR Dion was having his customary sip of Cognac.  We got into a conversation.  It was about bowling, of course.  He asked how I had done and I told him that I thought that in three strings I had perhaps knocked down about 150 pins.  He laughed and he said, "You don't know how to keep score, do you?"  I admitted it.  While he sipped away, he took his trusty, ever present Shaeffer white dot, fine-line pencil and began to show me how to keep score.  Now I am not a mathematics whiz, but it soon became clear to me that bowling is a shyster's game. You've been exposed to my rant about getting A+ on a report card.  Now I know where it comes from.  It comes from bowling.  Bowling is a sham.  It is arithmetic trickery.  You throw the ball, knock all the pins down and that counts for ten.  Throw the ball again, knock all the pins down and that counts for 10 + 10 = 20.  Throw the ball again and knock down all the pins and that counts for 10+10+10 = 30.  So far so good.  Here's where it gets tricky.  Throw the ball again, knock down all the pins and that counts for 30+10 = 60.  Throw the ball again and knock down all the pins and now 60 + 10 = 90.  Now look.  If my $0.75 per hour clicked up that fast, do you suppose that I would be sitting here at 1:00 AM telling you this silly story?  When EFR Dion announced to me that a perfect 300 game was not knocking down 300 pins I knew that a politician had invented the scoring system in bowling.  The way the sharks have it figured out is that all you have to do to get credit for 300 is to knock down 120.  Now that is slick!  In fact, to remember Wee Willy Clinton, that is slicker'n slick!  I tell you, this still has me shaking my head.  It is the only game that you can say that you got a perfect 300 score when all you did was to perform at 40%.  How can you go through life with that on your conscience?  That means that if you got two perfect games in a row, you would have earned an A++ on your report card.  It's even worse than football, I think.  Imagine if in all honesty you would just say that the Patriots beat the Chargers 10 - 4 would that dim the effort of the Patriots?  Why go through the bamboozlement of saying 35 -12?  Such mental tomfoolery for nothing.
Anyway, that is my thought for now.  I do not bowl.  I don't have the stomach to get 100% credit for a 40% performance.  
Hey, don't get nervous.  It's just a thought!