The best way to bowl is to put the rails up so no one can gutter ball, then play for lowest score. It's impossible to take serious, no one can be good or bad at it, a 7/10 split still sucks, and the people in the next lane will be very confused.

Fun all around.

i think it’s genuinely worse when people are good at karaoke

I was the guy that owned his own bowling balls (yes, plural) and shoes. In my twenties. Mostly because it was near impossible to find a ball that had the right weight and hole size.

But I have a story: I went to an Evangelical university in the early 2000s. Start of sophomore year they held a bowling tournament at the local alley. So me and two friends signed up. But we first went to the thrift store and bought cheap polyester suits and enormous aviator sunglasses, aiming for something out of the "Sabotage" music video. Our other friend decided to dress up like he was our "muscle" by wearing an outfit like you'd see in the background of the "Beat It" music video. We walked into the alley (which had not been updated since probably 1981, other than the scoring screens) and decided to take on personas like we owned the place, talking trash and generally acting like we existed in a different plane from everyone else. I kept an unlit cigarette in my mouth the whole time. I was the first of our team to bowl and, quite magically, I got a strike right out the gate.

All these church youth-group types were our competition. They had no idea how to deal with us. We won our match and then went to the bar, ordering Miller High Life and pretending we were regulars. Then the guy who held the event came up to us. Apparently drinking alcohol at a university sponsored event is a VERY serious no-no. Even though the official stance was that students of legal age were allowed to drink (at extremely moderate levels), alcohol was not allowed on campus nor, apparently, at events. Oops. Perhaps because we were having a good time they let it slide (I was also an RA at the time, which probably helped). Either way, we finished 3rd.

Back when the small town I grew up in still had a bowling alley, I was regularly scoring perfect games. I even had my own ball.

I might be guilty of this. Used to go every week with a friend and eventually started figuring out my stride. Now I’m the one that does better than a casual player and it’s weird.

Any time I go with my wife I go with the expectation that she'll absolutely destroy my score. But she was on her college bowling team. Same with golf.

Only because you mentioned shoes: all three of the main generals involved in the Battle of Waterloo (Wellington, Blucher and Napoleon) had a type of shoe or boot named after them.

Unfortunately, I'm infected with the "Why do something unless you're trying to get gud?"

Which means, I'll try something for a while and if I think I have some base talent as a foundation and I don't have anything else I'm obsessed with at the time I'm absolutely going to fixate on it until I'm really good. But if I think I'm doomed to mediocrity I completely lose interest in it. Note that I don't have to start off good, I just need to feel an intuition of "Oh, I could go somewhere with this."

I suck at bowling and I don't ever want to do it. I only begrudgingly do it because friends drag me to it and if they let me I'll sit out and just chit chat instead of actually playing.

Here, I fixed it for ya:

genuinely nothing worse than going bowling with people who are actually good. like why are you doing all that