Chapter 2: It isn't

It was Jorge Luis Borges who said you could write a thousand biographies of a single person. A biography about their loves, about their jobs, about their family, about their taste in food and music and all the times they went to the barber and every time they write a train...

He didn't say that exactly. It was a half-remembered description of a Borges quote from a prof I had back in the summer, now cutely summed up in this way.

Of course, in any given person, only one of these biographies would probably be of interest. If that many. A few years ago, I attempted (and more or less succeeded) to write an autobiography wrapped around the conceit of my near-decade of bowling, mingled with my awkward adolescent experiences with girls, my growth as a writer (to think I thought I had fully grown then: I'd barely started. Still growing now, at a remarkable pace I think.) It was a fruit salad of content, but the backbone was bowling because from 1998 until 2007, it was the constant. It was where I met my first girlfriend, where I had my first job. Where I first saw a transsexual, for what that's worth. It was because of this bowling that dad met his longtime girlfriend. I was in the league with her son.

Of course this was a pointless exercise. I wanted something easy to write, and although autobiographies are against the "rules" of NaNoWriMo, the contest in which I was ostensibly participating, I went ahead anyway. A funny thing. All the years leading up to SWP are obscure, gone except for my memory of them, but so long as there's an internet, I assume SWP will always be there to be my record. How stupid it sometimes is: a faithful record of my stupidity, unconcerned with the future context of some of my more morose ramblings. A person writing himself into existence. And now I'm tweeting myself into a double-life too. A punchier, more lighthearted one.

An autobiography of Scott as athlete.

Bowling was the only sport at which I ever excelled, possibly owing to my self-obsession (which has long since mutated into an eager preoccupation with observing others.) I wasn't immediately good at league-level 10-pin, but uncharacteristically I persevered, until by the end of the first year I rolled a 180 in Travel League finals at Bowlerama West (the crown jewel of the Bowlerama franchise,) a number I'd be rather pleased to get nowadays. In bowling, you don't face other people, you face yourself. The lane is supposedly the same, although it isn't always. The pins are supposed to behave the same, although they don't always. Your opponent's performance has no effect on your own except the psychological. You face your inner self and your physical limitations. Bowling was my way of wrestling against all the things my body did that were out of my control as a teenager. How I walked, swung the ball, walked confidently up and down the lanes was a different person from the shuffling, introverted kid I was during the week. But that was when I was doing well. When I wasn't, when my arm gave out sooner than usual, or my stride just didn't hit the right rhythm, or for whatever reason I wasn't doing as well as I knew I could, I took it hard. I was an over-emotional kid, which might shock some of my friends but not all of them. But man, I sure did get worked up over not making a spare.

Technically speaking, if you're a skinny kid with glasses, you can bowl as well as a fat middle-aged dude or a grown woman. It's physical, but not dependent entirely on the facts of your body: it's just how you use it.

This was the sport that carried me through puberty, those awkward years between grade 6 and the end of Sheridan, by which point my body was more or less mature. I was a spotty kid (to use the British terminology.) I always thought the grease of the bowling alley contributed to this problem: the beginning and end of my case coincided with beginning and ending league bowling. It was just me though, not an epidemic. It bothered my parents, which bothered me. And now here I am, however many years later. I don't know if I'm a good-looking dude or not, but my skin is clear.

Before that, it was football, and before that soccer. Soccer started around the time kids at school were getting tired of games of make-believe and fake a cappella groups (we did really bad Weird Al style parodies) and needed something physical to do at recess. I was usually goalie. Remarkably I never broke my glasses.

I had fast hands. Still do. Oftentimes at work, I'll be struggling with a bunch of product and it might get knocked off a counter, and without even looking at it I'll catch it -- or stop it, or catch SOME of it. My proudest moment was a shoot-out where I was in net against Dean, at the time a formidable soccer player. He tried to fake me out. He took his shot. Bam. It hit my hands. The ball was stopped between my palms. I was holding it. And what I remember about that moment was this:

One: I just stopped a shot from the best player in our grade. I am the greatest goalie ever.

And two: Holy FUCK THAT HURT.

Pro goalies wear gloves, kids.

Football I was less good at. The tagalong kid. My best friend Drew was the quarterback. I was typically the guy passing him the ball at the snap. Maybe the dude just liked ass. Any ass. Probably not though.

Couldn't throw a spiral, couldn't hardly catch a ball (sometimes though.) Definitely couldn't run (that's why I was a goalie) and couldn't tackle for shit. Football was not my sport.

There was also a brief time when I was good at basketball: sorta. I had an amazing talent for getting the ball off my opponents, just snagging it when they weren't looking, swiping it and speeding down the court before anyone knew I had gotten the ball. Couldn't shoot for shit, though. And that was the shame of it, there was never anyone on my team at that end of the court to pass it to, so I had to take the shot.

The last time I played any of these sports was in grade 9 gym. You know that cliche about the skinny, nerdy kid who always got picked last? Oddly enough, that wasn't me.

It totally would've been, mind you. I so completely fall into that archetype. But at that age, somehow it's as much about who you know as what you can do. I was friends with Luke, who usually ended up as captain of whatever team so while I was definitely not the first round pick, I was in such low demand that by the time he had one or two relatively strong athletes I'd still be there, because I was his buddy and he was loyal. I didn't think I even deserved it.

Anyway, life has been that uneventful that I've spent this whole night reliving this nonsense rather than deal with the actualities of my life... which is sad, sincEI have papers coming due.

Well, I'll find my way. I always do.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto